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Just like flying cars, <keyword id="6419367" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="cloning" source="Orion">cloning</keyword> has always been a mainstay of sci-fi. And since <keyword id="1413669" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="dolly-the-sheep" source="Orion">Dolly the sheep</keyword> baaa-ed her way into the world nearly 30 years ago, we've come a long way.<br /><br />Now, Chinese scientists have cracked another egg in the cloning game, successfully creating the first healthy rhesus <keyword id="57812" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="monkey" source="Orion">monkey</keyword> (<em><keyword id="20243699" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="macaca" source="keywords">Macaca</keyword> mulatt</em>) called <keyword id="20243698" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="retro" source="keywords">Retro</keyword>. This feat is a giant leap for mankind... well, monkeykind at least. It could pave the way for new treatments for all sorts of ailments.<br /><br />Since Dolly's big debut in 1996, scientists have cloned over 20 different creatures using a trick called somatic cell nuclear transfer (<keyword id="3514306" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="scnt" source="Orion">SCNT</keyword>). But primates have proven tricky.<br /><br />For instance, one earlier experiment only saw one monkey out of 35 foetuses make it, and even then, it only lasted a day. Even the current "successful" experiment took a whopping 133 tries to get one healthy monkey, as some eagle-eyed researchers pointed out. Still, it's a far cry from previous attempts, where most clones went the way of the dodo.<br /><br />The problem? Turns out, cloned embryos often have placentas much more unstable than those grown in a lab.<br /><br />The researchers fixed this by using a new trick where they swapped the placenta-making cells of the cloned embryo with ones from a normal one. This worked a treat, and Retro was born a healthy two-year-old.<br /><br />Scientists are hoping this new wrinkle will let them create identical rhesus monkeys for medical research. These monkeys are like distant cousins of ours, sharing a fair bit of our DNA, making them ideal for studying all sorts of diseases, from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's to the big C. Having genetically identical monkeys would also let researchers test drugs and treatments in a more controlled manner.<br /><br />But despite the potential for good, there's some concerns surrounding this whole monkey business. Some experts reckon the low success rate means loads of poor monkeys will suffer before a healthy one pops out. And then there's the whole human cloning thing, which, although the scientists and most of the brainiacs say it's a no-go, still has some folks worried sick.<br /><br />So, while Retro's arrival is a splendid achievement, there's still a right old balancing act to be done between the potential benefits and the ethical worries.<br />

Scientists manage to clone world's first healthy rhesus monkey!

<p align="left">The editors of the journal <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> have chosen cancer immunotherapy - using the body's immune system to attack tumors instead of targeting the tumor itself - as the biggest breakthrough of <keyword id="133644" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="2013">2013</keyword>.</p>
<p align="left">"Cancer immunotherapy clinched the #1 spot because it's causing such a paradigm shift among researchers in how they tackle cancer," the journal's editorial team wrote in a statement.</p>
<p align="left">The technique involves training immune cells to recognize the characteristics of cancer cells, and then fight back. There's still a lot of work ahead since the treatment has only worked for a few patients and some types of cancers so far, but the results from clinical trials offer hope for a new weapon against cancer.</p>
<p align="left">Nine other groundbreaking achievements that were chosen from this year are detailed below.</p>
<h3>Scientists discover the first real reason we need sleep</h3>
<p>By studying a newfound pathway in mice, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-first-real-reason-we-need-to-sleep-2013-10">scientists identified the first major mechanical reason we need to sleep</a>: to clean the brain. When the brain is sleeping, channels between cells grow. This allows cerebrospinal fluid into the depths of the brain tissues to flush out toxic proteins that build up during the day, including the kind that are responsible for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.</p>
<h3><div class="image-container full"><div class="image"><p class="source">Xie, et. al, Science, 2013.</p><p class="caption">When mice sleep, ?uid-filled channels (pale blue) between neurons expand and flush out waste.</p></div></div>A gene-editing tool called <strong>CRISPR soars in popularity</strong></h3>
<p>CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, was discovered in bacteria where it operates like an immune system against invading viruses. The structure is made up of a series of repeated stretches broken up by short "spacer" sequences. The short sequences come from viruses that infected the bacterial cell. Researchers use CRISPR as a gene-editing tool to "cut DNA at precise locations - and at several sites at once, if desired - so that they can test the effects of mutations inside a cell," <a href="http://www.genengnews.com/insight-and-intelligence/crispr-madness/77899947/" target="_blank">Patricia Fitzpatrick explains in Genetic Engineering &amp; Biotechnology News</a>. This year, dozens of teams of researchers have used the revolutionary technique to "manipulate the genomes of various plant, animal and human cells," the editors of Science write.</p>
<p class="full"><div class="image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source">K. SUTLIFF/ SCIENCE</p><p class="caption">To home in on the right DNA, the Cas9 protein links up with guide RNA that  has a target-speci?c sequence. Once attached, Cas9 has two active sites that cut the DNA in the  right place. </p></div></div></p>
<h3><strong>Scientists Succeed In Growing A Variety Of Mini-Organs</strong></h3>
<p><strong></strong>Mini organs grown in the lab, called "organoids," provide scientists with new ways to test drugs and examine diseases in a human context. This year, Austrian researchers grew <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-grew-mini-human-brains-from-stem-cells-2013-8">mini human brains</a>, three-dimensional blobs of tissue about the size of an apple seed. The tiny brains have no blood supply, but still provide a better biological model than, say, mice for researchers to understand how the brain develops and study disorders.</p>
<p class="full"><div class="image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source">Institute for Molecular Biotechnology</p><p class="caption">A cross-section of an entire organoid showing development of different brain regions.</p></div></div></p>
<h3>Researchers recognize the importance of microbes for our health</h3>
<p><strong></strong>Researchers are finally understanding that bacteria and other organisms that live in the human body can be good for us. The body hosts trillions of tiny organisms called microbes. Some microbes, or "germs," cause diseases, but the majority of them are harmless and others even benefit our immune and digestive systems, scientists have found. This year, gut microbes have been shown to influence anticancer therapies in humans and play a role in weight loss and protection again allergies and asthma in studies of mice.</p>
<h3><strong>Perovskite cells show promise for high-efficiency, inexpensive solar power</strong></h3>
<p>A <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131112/ncomms3761/full/ncomms3761.html" target="_blank">new solar cell material called perovskite</a> showed great promise this year as a low-cost, more efficient alternative to traditional silicon-based cells. Within four years of development, perovskite cells reached efficiency levels that took more than a decade for technologies used today to reach. Researchers still have to find a way to make perovskite as durable as silicon and prove that it doesn't contain toxic elements that would make it unsafe for use.</p>
<p class="full"><div class="image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><p class="source">Boshu Zhang, Wong Choon Lim Glenn &amp; Mingzhen Liu</p><p class="caption">A thin-film solar cell made of perovskite could soon replace expensive silicon-based solar cells.</p></div></div></div></p>
<h3>Researchers use structural <keyword id="6502723" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="biology">biology</keyword> to make a new vaccine</h3>
<p><strong></strong>For the first time scientists developed a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common childhood virus, using a technique called structural biology. Efforts to create a vaccine against RSV had stalled using traditional methods - exposing the body to dead virus or a weak strain and letting it make a random assortment of antibodies against it.</p>
<p>Instead, researchers used a different tactic - they aimed to get the body to make a special antibody that makes some people resistant to the virus. They did so by analyzing the structure of the RSV protein when it is bound to the antibody. They then made a mutated version of a RSV protein that was a slightly different shape than normal, but the change in shape made the part that binds this killer antibody more visible. That means that body makes more of these killer antibodies to fight off the virus.</p>
<h3>Scientists make human stem cells through cloning</h3>
<p><strong></strong>Researchers were <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/human-clone-embryonic-stem-cell-lines-2013-5">able to make embryonic stem cells by cloning human</a> skin cells, a feat that has been in the works for more than a decade. Since stem cells can turn into any tissue in the body - and in this case are an exact genetic match to the cloned cell - the technique may one day be used to develop replacement tissues and organs to treat diseases. It also takes us one step closer to producing cloned babies. The cloning technique is essentially the same one used to clone animals, including Dolly the sheep 17 years ago. After years of failed attempts, scientists realized that adding a bit of caffeine enabled them to produce stems cells from cloned human embryos.</p>
<h3 class="full"><div class="image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/56349.php?from=239436">Cell, Tachibana et al.</a></p><p class="caption"> The first step during SCNT is enucleation or removal of nuclear genetic material (chromosomal) from a human egg.</p></div></div></h3>
<h3>The CLARITY imaging technique makes it easier to see the brain</h3>
<p>CLARITY allows scientists to see through the entire intact brain without slicing it up, which was problematic because it severed connections between cells."Studying intact systems with this sort of molecular resolution and global scope - to be able to see the fine detail and the big picture at the same time - has been a major unmet goal in biology, and a goal that CLARITY begins to address," study leader Karl Deisseroth, a bioengineer and psychiatrist at Stanford University, <a href="http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/april/clarity.html">said in a statement</a>.</p>
<p class="full"><div class="image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source">Kwanghun Chung and Karl Deisseroth, Howard Hughes Medical Institute/Stanford University</p><p class="caption">A detailed glimpse of an intact mouse brain is seen using the CLARITY method.</p></div></div></p>
<h3>Scientists found the source of cosmic rays</h3>
<p><strong style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></strong>The origin of cosmic rays, high-energy particles that speed through space and smash into Earth's upper atmosphere, has eluded scientists since they were detected 100 years ago. But this year, scientists found evidence that at least some <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-have-solved-the-mystery-of-cosmic-rays-2013-2">cosmic rays come from exploding stars</a>, or supernovas. Supernova remnants act like an "expanding shell of matter," <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/high-energy-cosmic-rays/" target="_blank">explains ScienceNow</a>. Protons that interact with gas surrounding the supernova get accelerated to almost the speed of light until they shoot off into space in all directions as cosmic rays.</p>
<p><div class="image-container full"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STScl-2005-15.png">Wikipedia</a></p><p class="caption">Scientists believe some cosmic rays come from supernova remnants, or exploding stars like this one.</p></div></div></p>

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Scientists manage to clone world's first healthy rhesus monkey!

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