(Simultaneous translation)
Mu-ming Poo is the founding and current director of the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, and Paul Licht Distinguished Professor in Biology Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley.
He is a member of Academia Sinica, US National Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Hong Kong Academy of Science. He had received Ameritec Prize (2001), Docteur Honoris Causa from École normale supérieure, Paris (2003), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2014) and Claude Bernard University of Lyon (2018), P. R. China International Science & Technology Cooperation Award (2005), Qiushi Distinguished Scientist Award (2011), and Gruber Neuroscience Prize (2016).
He is currently an editorial board member of Neuron, Editor of Developmental Neurobiology, and Executive Editor-in-Chief for National Science Review.
Mu-ming Poo, Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai
Research in experimental biology and biomedical sciences has been greatly facilitated by the use of animal models. Because of their evolutionary proximity to humans, non-human primates are favorable animal models for understanding human neurobiology and brain disorders. I will describe our efforts in developing macaque and marmoset monkey models for studying higher cognitive functions that are most prominent in the primate species, e.g., complex executive functions, empathy, social behaviors, and consciousness. With advances in the development of efficient gene-editing technologies, e.g., CRISPR/Cas9 methods, it is now feasible to generate gene-edited monkeys with phenotypes that mimic human diseases due to gene defects. However, to be useful as preclinical animal studies, it is desirable to have monkeys with relatively uniform genetic background, analogous to many mouse lines that were developed as disease models. I will summarize our recent efforts in cloning macaque monkeys using somatic cell nuclear transfer and showed that this approach could be used in generating macaque monkey clones carrying identical gene-editing. These gene-edited macaque monkeys with uniform genetic background will be very useful for studying primate neurobiology and for developing therapeutics for human diseases. Such use of non-human primates, like other frontier research in science and technology, inevitably raises ethical issues that must be satisfactorily dealt with by the research community and the society at large. I will thus also address the relevant ethical issues associated with gene editing and the use of non-human primates in biomedical research.
