Three parent baby report leaves many unanswered questions
by Philippa Taylor, CMF:
News has broken this week of the birth of the first baby to be created with DNA from three people, using a controversial new technology.
The story has gained particular publicity and notoriety because the technique, developed to avoid passing on rare genetic disorders, is still experimental and it has created a five month old baby boy with three genetic parents – he has genetic material from two mothers (nuclear DNA from one, and small amounts of mitochondrial DNA from another) as well as his father.
Details of the story remain sketchy. New Scientist, which broke the news, says that the parents had lost two older children to a mitochondrial disease. Lead scientist, Dr John Zhang, reportedly used maternal spindle transfer (MST) to create five human embryos. Four embryos failed to develop, three because of chromosomal abnormalities. The one surviving embryo was transferred to the mother-to-be.
Apparently 1% to 2% of the mother’s diseased mitochondrial DNA have remained in the baby’s cells, but the baby does not appear to have Leigh syndrome, the condition that killed his two siblings.
Briefly, the method Zhang used involves removing the nucleus from one of the mother’s egg cells and inserting that nucleus into a donor egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed (but with the cytoplasm and mitochondrial DNA still there). The result is eggs with mitochondrial DNA (and cytoplasm) from a healthy donor and nuclear DNA from the mother that will then be fertilised. More detail on the technique is here.
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