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Sequencing the Unborn

Posted by Soulskill on from the time-to-reboot-gattaca dept.

sciencehabit writes "What if you could read much of your child's medical future while it was still in the womb? Taking a major step toward that goal, one fraught with therapeutic potential and ethical questions, scientists have now accurately predicted almost the whole genome of an unborn child by sequencing DNA from the mother's blood and DNA from the father's saliva (abstract)."

4 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Odd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't see how this is possible, given that genetic recombination happens. Unless the parents are very genetically similar (ick), there should be billions of possibilities.

    This problem is my area of research (didn't RTFA, just assuming this is how they did it). There is cell free fetal DNA circulating in mothers and the challenge is isolating enough of it for deep sequencing without contamination from mom. I'm assuming they are using dad's DNA to help 'choose' between competing reads to figure out which ones are mom and which ones are fetal in origin. A less sophisticated version of this approach has been used to test for TS21 (Down's syndrome).

  2. My WTF, explained by jfengel · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's decidedly unclear from the summary: they're sequencing fetal cells found in the mother's blood. It was separated from the mother's own blood cells with a nify trick using the father's DNA.

    So it allows them to sequence the baby's type without having to touch the infant itself. They're not making any "mother+father=baby" predictions before the baby is conceived, which would be impossible just from their ordinary (somatic) cells.

  3. Re:Odd by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Informative

    To summarize: it's not yet possible to isolate only embryonic DNA from the mothers' blood, so using the father and mother's DNA sequences, they can tell which sequences are from the mother and which one are from the embryo.

    Without the father's sequence, the confidence in the sequencing probably goes down, but is still possible.

  4. Re:They made a movie about this... by zill · · Score: 4, Informative
    Straight from the script:

    Now you appreciate I can only work with the raw material I have at my disposal but for a little extra...I could also attempt to insert sequences associated with enhanced mathematical or musical ability.

    Emphasis mine.