Tetra (born October 12, 1999) is a

rhesus macaque The rhesus macaque (''Macaca mulatta''), colloquially rhesus monkey, is a species of Old World monkey. There are between six and nine recognised subspecies that are split between two groups, the Chinese-derived and the Indian-derived. Generally b ...

that was created through a cloning technique called " embryo splitting". She is the first "cloned"

primate Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

by artificial twinning, and was created by a team led by Professor

Gerald Schatten Gerald Schatten (born 1949) is an American stem cell researcher with interests in cell, developmental, and reproductive biology. He is Professor and vice-chair of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and Professor of Cell Biology a ...

of the

Oregon National Primate Research Center The Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) is one of seven federally funded National Primate Research Centers in the United States and has been affiliated with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) since 1998. The center is located ...

Description

Tetra was created using embryo splitting, a process where the cells in the

embryo An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male spe ...

are split at the eight–cell stage to create four identical two cell embryos. This was the first time this technique had proven successful in monkeys, although it is often used in cattle. She was the first primate to have been cloned using this "splitting" technique. The first non-human primate derived from nuclear transfer was created in 1997 using a different technique for "cloning". Only two of the four embryos survived to a sufficient stage in which they could be implanted into surrogates, and Tetra was the only one to be delivered successfully after 157 days. The announcement of Tetra was made on 13 January 2000, when she was four months old. It was thought that by producing identical primates, advances in human medical research could be made. A further four monkeys, cloned using this same technique were due to be born in May 2000. The team at the

working on the project was led by Professor

, who described the process involved as "artificial twinning". It was not the same technique used to produce Dolly the sheep, which involved transferring material from an adult animal into an empty cell sack. In following year, the team produced another rhesus macaque, named Andi, who was the first genetically modified monkey. The egg that was used had been modified to include the

jellyfish Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbrella- ...

gene to make cells glow under a special microscope.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tetra (Monkey) Cloned animals Individual monkeys Individual animals in the United States 1999 animal births

Description

See also

References

External links