西亚试剂：Online legacy

In the next few months, Sherwood’s team plans to launch a website with a database for researchers and an educational component for the public. The site will eventually include existing data on the chimps’ performance in behaviour and personality tests, scans of the primates’ brain structure and activity, and their pedigrees and some genetic information. Sherwood and his colleagues plan to model the website on that of the Human Connectome Project, an open-access collection of brain scans from 1,200 individuals that researchers can use to study the links between brain structure and activity and human traits.

Chet Sherwood
A chimp-brain biobank will help researchers to study the animals' neurobiology.
The team is also collaborating with the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle, Washington, to create an atlas of gene expression in the chimp brain. Researchers who want to study chimp brains in more detail can request tissue and blood samples from the team, which has nearly 250 preserved organs stored at facilities in Washington DC and Atlanta.

But some scientists and advocates worry about the consequences of losing access to research chimps. Frankie Trull, director of the Foundation for Biomedical Research in Washington DC, which advocates for animal research, says that the US government may regret its decision if a public-health threat emerges that would be best studied in chimpanzees. Others caution that the dwindling number of research animals will make it difficult to develop therapies — such as vaccines against Ebola — for wild chimps, which would help both the animals and human beings.

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