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.'"

Comments

Nuclear vs. mitochondrial DNA

[Ihlosi]

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?

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".