May 2, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

First baby "from three parents" born in UK

To prevent the birth of children with incurable hereditary diseases, British scientists have developed a method for creating an embryo using the DNA of three people – parents and a donor.

The first child has already been born. The essence of mitochondrial donation (MDT) is the use of egg tissue from healthy female donors to create embryos that do not contain harmful mutations from their mother. In the embryos, the spermatozoa and eggs of the biological parents are combined with mitochondria from the donor’s egg. The child has the DNA of the mother and father, and a small amount of the donor’s genetic material.

Mitochondria are small (1/2000-1/4000th of a needle tip size) intracellular organelles, our miniature energy stations, of which there are a huge number in the human body – about 2000 mitochondria per cell.

An innovative way of tripartite IVF, tells Air force, developed by scientists at the University of Newcastle. It is called “mitochondrial replacement therapy” and helps prevent incurable genetic disorders in children when their mothers are carriers of mitochondrial diseases. This method of artificial insemination involves the use of only 0.1% of the DNA of a female donor, in connection with which scientists insist that the child only two parents, not three.

It is worth noting the importance of the development of British scientists. Defects in mitochondria in the cells of the mother lead to the birth of children with severe diseases: they may suffer from brain dysfunction, muscular dystrophy, heart defects and blindness.

As Professor Doug Turnbull, who led the study, explained in an interview with the BBC, in the most critical cases, children with these diseases die in the first 48 hours of life.

But there is another point of view, the opinion of a conspiracy theorist:



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