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Sequencing the Unborn
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)."
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.
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.
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.