Singapore to create animals with human DNA
By DPA,
DPA
| 01. 09. 2008
Scientists eager to splice human genes with animal cells are seeking a public feedback on the prospect of such controversial research, the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) said on Wednesday.
A consultation paper on its website said the BAC considers human stem cell research to have considerable potential in the treatment of currently incurable diseases, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
"While there have been significant advances in stem cell science and technology, research involving human-animal combinations is required for further progress," the BAC said.
Professor Lim Pin, BAC chairperson, said scientists overwhelmingly want to conduct research in a way that is ethical.
Those favouring such research maintain it could be vital to finding cures to many human diseases. Mice with human brain cells could be used as test beds for Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease drugs, they said.
The city-state, with its ambitions to become a global bio-medical powerhouse, has the technology to create these "mixed animals" that can be created by infusing a human nucleus, the cell's nerve centre, with an animal egg or cell, Lim said...
Related Articles
By David Coltman, Carson Mitchell, Liam Alastair Wayde Carter, and Tommy Galfano, The Conversation | 05.12.2025
Gray wolf by Jessica Eirich via Unsplash
“I’m not a scarcity guy, I’m an abundance guy”
– Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm, The New Yorker, 4/14/25
Even the most casual consumers of news will have seen the run of recent headlines featuring the company Colossal Biosciences. On March 4, they announced with great fanfare the world’s first-ever woolly mice, as a first step toward creating a woolly mammoth. Then they topped that on April 7 by unveiling one...
Riquet Mammoth Kakao (c.1920)
by Ludwig Hohlwein, Public Domain via Flickr
Colossal, the de-extinction company, scored headlines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) recently by announcing that they had created mice! Not just any mice, not even colossal mice, but genetically engineered, normal-size “woolly mice” that are the result of editing seven genes in mouse embryos. This Colossal presented as an important step toward making a specimen of charismatic megafauna – a...
By Ben Johnson, Nature | 02.14.2025
A London-based biotech has amassed the world’s largest ethically sourced foundational biodiversity database for training artificial intelligence (AI) by setting up partnerships with 25 countries around the world. The startup, Basecamp Research, announced in January the launch of a new...