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Three Parents Contribute to Experimental Human Embryo
gihan_ripper writes "It sounds like the storyline from a cheesy film, but a human embryo has been created using the genetic material from one man and two women. A team from Newcastle University, England, developed the technique in the hope that it could be used to prevent diseases caused by faulty mitochondria. Their experiment started with two ingredients: first, a left over (and 'severely abnormal') embryo from an IVF treatment; second, a donor egg from another woman. The donor egg has all but the mitochondrial DNA removed, then a nucleus from the embryo is inserted into the egg. Effectively, this results in a mitochondria transplant. 'While any baby born through this method would have genetic elements from three people, the nuclear DNA that influences appearance and other characteristics would not come from the woman providing the donor egg. However, the team only have permission to carry out the lab experiments and as yet this would not be allowed to be offered as a treatment.'"
Two chicks at once!
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
There's a kid who's going to spend their whole life dreading Mother's Day.
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Just because they can, should they? Maybe I'm too cynical, but in a world that's already overpopulated it seems counter-productive in the long run to figure out how to make humans the most expensive way possible. I probably need coffee and a Blank Expression.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It's funny to see this happening with mankind already, since science fiction has long dreamt up advanced human or alien races with triune families, e.g. the Soft Ones from Asimov's The Gods Themselves , and in Larry Niven's Known Space universe it's one of the social innovations that only comes about in five hundred years or so.
Boil your eggs!
Since mitochondria are only passed by the mother, effectively asexual reproduction of those genes, I assume there's less genetic mixing to keep it healthy (I've heard dad's does get in on rare occasions). Would combining mitochondrial DNA sources instead of replacing be of any benefit?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The next step is to implant the embryo into Arnold Schwarzenegger. Get ready for some madcap fun!
One man and two women... the American (het male) dream. Leave it to a bunch of geeks to turn it from sex into a test tube.
--
make install -not war
It would make for an interesting remake of "Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice."
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
God, I hope they aren't going to patent threesomes now!
Serpentor
If he had a million dollars?
Two eggs at the same time...
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IANAB (biologist) but couldn't there be another application for this:
Say a couple want to have a child but they know they will pass on a serious genetic defect.
The article suggests that the baby will have DNA from all three parties and says appearance and "other characteristics" will be like the 'real' mother. But maybe it could also receive the "healthy" DNA strings from the donor egg thereby not passing on the genetic malfunction?
I don't know if this is even scientifically possible, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Which joke-reference to make, Serpentor, or Kaaaaahn...
geek. lawyer.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
That is not going to work, unless the genetic defect was in the mitochondrial DNA of the original zygote. Mitochondria are organelles (kind of like organs for a single cell) that have their own DNA (some suspect that they might actually once have been separate life forms that sort of formed a permanent symbiosis with the rest of the cell). What's in the mitochondrial DNA doesn't affect the rest of the body, as long as the mitochondria are functioning correctly.
The process described in the article is about making a cell that has a nucleus with DNA from two parents, and mitochondria with DNA from a third "parent".
To be clear, I'm not one of these "we must not play God, we're messing around with things we don't understand" types. At the same time, I do wonder if we understand the principles with which we're working as well as the write-up suggests. On the other hand, that is why we run experiments...
The write-up seems to carry some assumptions from our current model of how DNA and genetic inheritance works. "the nuclear DNA that influences appearance and other characteristics would not come from the woman providing the donor egg"... well, ok. Do genetic researchers understand why "cloned" animals don't always look like the parent? I've never heard it explained, and to my admittedly outsider point of view, that seems to raise some questions about how well we understand what determines "appearance and other characteristics" in complex organisms...
The child's features should still be similar to the parents not contributing the mitochondria, but how about the child's size?
Would the growth of certain features be influence by the mitochondria?
but a human embryo has been created using the genetic material from one man and two women.
I know its election day in many states, but please, enough talk about the Clintons and their foibles.
Table-ized A.I.
Assuming it has the right number of chromosomes, and all the basic genetic material is in the right places, it shouldn't be any different than anyone else. It just won't have whatever genetic disease they're trying to eliminate.
If it's unethical, it's because this is a slippery slope to picking the color of your kid's eyes, and how fast they can run. Think about Gattaca.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
The usual row errupted a couple days ago when the Pope was quoted as saying that (I'm paraphrasing) "some uses of biotechnology are incompatible with and diminish human dignity." Like having 3 genetic parents?
On a lighter note, if there's a divorce (a 3-way divorce?) none of them will pay child support.
Mitochondrial dna already has little variation between individuals. It is always inherited from your mom and has no bearing on any physical/mental traits unless it's damaged.
I recall that they have been planning this for a while. Check out http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6547-scientists-seek-to-create-threeparent-babies.html. Funny enough, this was banned in the US, though this is a great way to treat mitochondrial disorders while still keeping the kid from being "the milk-mans" baby....err "milk-womans"?
import system.cool.Sig;
The parent post contains a spoiler for this excellent book; don't read the parent post if you haven't already read the book named in the title!!!
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
I h8 u.
...wait 10 years from now. We will have all kinds of freaks of "nature". And, when that happens, you can count on these kinds of things to happen:
1. "Parents" find out at birth that they are not happy with the results - (Billy has six hearts and a fourth of a lung).
2. "Children" that weren't too happy about being a party to Mom/Dads designer genetic tastes - (Billy sues Mom - Dad goes AWOL).
3. "Interest Groups" that go on kill Frankenstein crusades to protect their children.
One could argue this ad infinitum but the fact is that this type of "research" is a dangerous, slippery slope. History will look back on this era as a time for missed opportunities to legislate against this globally. Instead everyone mocks Bush and the Pope.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
You can actually buy cell lines and even mouse strains that have defective mitochondria. With these lines you can give them a specific chemical and ALL the mitochondria will be killed. You can then add a different mitochondrial line which will replicate and save the cell...allowing you to study the altered metabolism.
Genetic researchers "know" why cloned animals don't necessarily look alike. A lot of the features we tune in on (spots and other colorations) are based on an absolutly random gene deactivation. Therefor identical twins (or clones) will have different freckles and slightly different hair colors etc.
But also it is important to remember that not all the information needed to create a cell is located in the DNA. All organells (like mitochondria) (with a few very obscure exceptions) cannot be recreated by the cell if removed. Therefore they contain unique information which can have a dramatic effect on the end result of development. These organells come exclusivly from the donor egg (with a few occasional exceptions (like mitochondria every now and then)).
What makes this experiment interesting is that they are now trying to develop finer controls over the clones organells which can help eliminate other diseases.
No, you're thinking of midichlorians. :-)
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Much like spam, you can legislate against this as much as you want, but with the equipment to do sequencing (currently) and creation (future) getting cheaper and cheaper all the time how do you expect to actually stop it? Also, we're likely to start having true miracle cures -- grow-your-own-replacement-heart in a lab. Or kidney. Lung has cancer? Just grow a new one and entirely remove the old.
You can rant and rave about religion and violating god's creation all you want, but this is just a tool. It will get used for good and for evil, your goal should be to embrace it and ensure that it gets used for more of the former than the latter.
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Also, what counts as "functioning?"
For instance, say you had a slightly less efficient protein that tended to drop things (high energy protons and electrons) before they were completly used slightly more requently than "normal." These dropped high energy particles will typically just generate extra heat or escape into the cell.
SOOO...you could eat more without gaining weight...
OR....
They would be dropped and escape the mitochondria and react with the cell causing oxidative stress leading to signs of aging or even cancer...
Both of these outcomes have been seen in people and both have "normal" mitochondria. While the nuclear DNA has a much stronger effect, mitochondria are critical and will also effect your life and health. Plus mitochondrial DNA mutates at a rate about an order of magnitude faster than nucear DNA (due to proximity to high energy reactions and reduced gene DNA protection systems) so your mDNA is almost certainly different than your mothers.
something we all dream of and science come together
Okay, so apparently as part of an experiment, just to see if it could be done, they fertilized human eggs, let the embryos develop for a few days, then killed them. Doesn't that bother ANYONE? Did I read that wrong? It sounds like they're creating people for experiments just to kill them! Yeah, I know a lot of you don't believe an embryo is a person, but I'm mainly posting for those who share my view but might have missed that aspect of the story.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
And your horrific spelling. Don't forget that. Retardation that severe is genetic, yes?
This short article leaves out the interesting issue of maternal RNA loading. Part of the reason the egg is so large is due to the actual production of the egg itself. Whereas sperm cells divide from a stem cell into 2 pre-sperm, then 4 sperm cells, a stem cell divides into 2 then 4 daughter cells. Only 1 of these cells becomes the egg, the other 3 are discarded. However, the other 3 pump their cytoplasm into the egg before being discarded, making the egg much larger. This transfer loads the egg with tons of maternal RNA that is free floating in the cytoplasm. This RNA will be used by the egg and newly formed fertilized cell before the cell can begin to make its own RNA. This maternal RNA does have an effect on the cell and its genetic expression. In this situation, the donor egg will have both mitochondria and its DNA in addition to RNA from the donor. While this RNA is only used for a short time, that time is a critical time in development and can control gene expression for the life of the organism.
GATTACA sir, not Gattaca. As far as the slippery slope we have been on it for a long time. Nuchal scans in pregnancy, 14 week scan, 20 week scan, tripple test and the tests for Talassemia and Cickle cell. So it is not a matter of are we on the slope to GATTACA, but how far are we on that slope.
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I can claim to want a threesome for "pro-creational" reasons?
Yeah, I agree, we've been headed in this direction for a while now. But now with three parents, we can actually target specific genes and swap them out for "better" genes. A genetic disease today, your specific height or IQ tomorrow. That's the moral issue here, not whether or not the kid will be a mutant.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
...but I predicted (and hoped for) this exact idea several years ago, when I was 1/3 of an FFM triad.
Regardless of the inevitable ethical outcry and the fact that it's no longer directly relevant to my current relationship situation, I think that this a very cool technology. It'd be great if it was developed to the point that viable, healthy offspring could be produced, though I doubt that mainstream society is ready for such things yet.
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KHAAAAAAANNNN!
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
I'd pick blue, or green. But I already do that when I pick my wife.
It's so tiresome seeing "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" attached to every science headline. It's an ignorant and cowardly attitude. What is this, a Fox TV show?
Incidentally, plants combine genetic material from more than two parents all the time, so doing this in an animal species is a very interesting thing. It's certainly possible and could have great advantages.
The point I'm trying to make is that we've already been on the slippery slope of eugenics since people started select mates. The technology just lets you go down this slope with a pair of skis rather than with one of those crazy carpets.
I'm curious to know what the Pope would think about this. ;)
On a related note, all persons with blue eyes are apparently related to one distant ancestor.
So no need to have three people involved to change the color of your kids eyes. Just turn off the switch in the OCA2 gene and you should get the desired results.
As a side note, it's nice to know I'm a mutant.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
GATTACA wasn't about the dangers of choosing things for your child. You seem to have missed the point it wasn't about right or wrong within a family unit at all! It was about how society (often incorrectly) defines perfect, and in doing so devalues every other option.
GATTACA's society simply defined a child who's genes were chosen as perfect, and any who's genes were randomly selected by basic biological reactions as flawed. In fact it is both character/active response to the environment, and biology (how the environment shapes gene expression) that leads to the ability to reach perfection - perfection pertaining only to specific situations/environs, of course.
I.E: There actually are situations in which a light-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed male has a greater advantage than a dark-haired, colored-skinned, brown-eyed woman. This does not mean that you can pull accurate generalities about light vs dark, fair vs colored, blue-eyed vs brown-eyed, or men vs women from that specific situation.
As for choosing the hair color, eye color, intelligence, speed, or stamina of my future child? I have no problems with taking away the random or adding new choices. Realistically every choice I make will have benefits and repercussions, and it would as time consuming/important/fun as creating your ultimate DnD character!
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
There are lots of things these scientsts don't know. Lots that they would admit they don't know.
Realistically, they only way they're going to find out, with present levels of knowledge, what these things develop into is to let them grow.
They destroyed them after 6 days.
Not ready yet.
Actually, that's a definition for technology, isn't it? Something that isn't finished?
please think of the children.
Hi mom, hi pop, hi whatthefuckdoIcallyou?
I believe the poster takes issue with the destruction of a developing embryo, rather than with genetic manipulation.
A "menage a trois" is literally a "household of three" or a "family of three."
The only rude meaning in it is created when Americans (incorrectly) think this is French for a threesome. "Menage a trois" as a idiomatic term is purely American-made- it means absoltely nothing of the sort anywhere else.
...this is a slippery slope to picking the color of your kid's eyes, and how fast they can run. If your kids eyes are running around, you have bigger concerns than how fast they're going and what colour they are.GENERATION 25: If you haven't yet, copy this into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. (Social experiment)
Not that this will necessarily make you feel any better about the ethics of the situation, but the embryo they used was a reject from in-vitro fertilization. It was going to be destroyed anyway, regardless of whether the experiment was performed. It's a fact that the majority of embryos produced for IVF are never brought to term.
This is nowhere near designer baby capabilities that were prominently featured in GATTACA. This is simply the swapping out of somatic nuclear/genetic material from one cell to the other, taking advantage of the fact that mitochondrial lineages propogate clonally. This isn't a genetic disease in the sense that you're thinking; it's not a disease found in the human genome. It's a disease isolated to the genome of one of our organelles ("organs" for our cells).
Quick bio recap: I don't know if you remember much from high school biology, but there are 2 sources of DNA in our cells, mitochondria and nucleus. The experiment in the article is essentially swapping mitochondria between 2 people, allowing someone to live without a potentially life threatening mitochondrial defect. In other words, once the mitochondria have been swapped (or in this case, genomic DNA), the person SHOULD develop as he would if he had normal mitochondria in the first place. The only reason I say SHOULD is because we don't know how the RNA content of the genome receiving cell will affect development (as opposed to maternal RNA in the donor cell). But, the person's genetic make up would be the same in both scenarios. I cannot emphasize enough that there is no specificity in what genes are transferred; you cannot pick and choose what gene gets moved, and from what I know, I don't think you ever CAN. You're moving a whole GENOME here.
Now, unless different mitochondrial lineages can affect ATP production to fuel bodily/cellular processes, conferring an advantage somehow by having more efficient ATP production or what not, this type of treatment isn't going to generate the same class divisions and prejudices you saw in GATTACA. Lastly, the kid who results from this treatment wouldn't be a mutant; mutations are changes in DNA sequence, structure that prevent proper transcription and translation into protein. These would be examples of genetic diseases, which you mentioned earlier. To further elaborate, cancerous cells could be considered mutants because of a defect in it's DNA sequence, but a person who has cancer isn't a mutant; only a subset of that person's cells, the cancerous ones, are mutant.
Hrm. This is OT, but you wouldn't happen to be mrxak from AmbrosiaSW forums and Aftermath, would you?
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Fiddly diddley dee! Two ladies!
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"Of course it's legal - they wouldn't have gotten approval to conduct the experiment otherwise, and they certainly wouldn't have published the results."