Exclusive: World’s first baby born with new “3 parent” technique
Source: New Scientist
Its a boy! A five-month-old boy is the first baby to be born using a new technique that incorporates DNA from three people, New Scientist can reveal. This is great news and a huge deal, says Dusko Ilic at Kings College London, who wasnt involved in the work. Its revolutionary.
The controversial technique, which allows parents with rare genetic mutations to have healthy babies, has only been legally approved in the UK. But the birth of the child, whose Jordanian parents were treated by a US-based team in Mexico, should fast-forward progress around the world, say embryologists.
The boys mother carries genes for Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system. Genes for the disease reside in DNA in the mitochondria, which provide energy for our cells and carry just 37 genes that are passed down to us from our mothers. This is separate from the majority of our DNA, which is housed in each cells nucleus.
...
But this technique wasnt appropriate for the couple as Muslims, they were opposed to the destruction of two embryos. So Zhang took a different approach, called spindle nuclear transfer. He removed the nucleus from one of the mothers eggs and inserted it into a donor egg that had had its own nucleus removed. The resulting egg with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor was then fertilised with the fathers sperm.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2107219-exclusive-worlds-first-baby-born-with-new-3-parent-technique/
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,318 posts)worth living in.
LisaM
(27,800 posts)This sounds very eugenic to me. Ugh, ugh, and more ugh.
ck4829
(35,042 posts)"Different genetic causes and types of Leigh syndrome have different prognoses, though all are poor. The most severe forms of the disease, caused by a full deficiency in one of the affected proteins, cause death at a few years of age. If the deficiency is not complete, the prognosis is somewhat better and an affected child is expected to survive 67 years, and in rare cases, to their teenage years."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_disease#Prognosis
This should be available to all, if that hurdle is crossed, diseases like this could become a thing of the past.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)and this one won't. Why would you say 'ugh' to that?
Most people have fully functioning mitochondria. And we get it all from our mothers, so it's basically the same in all siblings, and in all the children the daughters have, and so on. So people's mitochondrial DNA is very similar, apart from when there's a copying mistake , and occasionally that produces a syndrome like this. This corrects a small but fatal error in the DNA.
shraby
(21,946 posts)eradication of a horrid disease.
bucolic_frolic
(43,123 posts)Triple down trickle down - KaCHING!
snooper2
(30,151 posts)Raster
(20,998 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)The faulty mtDNA tends to kill those with it, while the extremely common, fully functioning type is what survives. This will be the functioning DNA surviving, but without the baby deaths.
LisaM
(27,800 posts)Coincidentally, I'm just reading "Frankenstein" at the moment, so this is just flat out scary.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)LisaM
(27,800 posts)I actually picked it up (I should have read it long ago) because it was referenced very movingly in "The Faraway Nearby" by Rebecca Solnit, another good book.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)I've passed up a lot of classics back in the day because I thought I couldn't relate.
LisaM
(27,800 posts)and I figured that it would be a good time to pick up another 19th century book, since I was already kind of in the cadence.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)womanofthehills
(8,688 posts)Perfect timing. I need to check out her other books.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)BumRushDaShow
(128,748 posts)NWCorona
(8,541 posts)BumRushDaShow
(128,748 posts)and John de Lancie always nailed him.
NWCorona
(8,541 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)Why do you think the child will be different from others?
Liberalagogo
(1,770 posts)He'll still have great pecs!
groundloop
(11,518 posts)LisaM
(27,800 posts)I seriously don't get this.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)things up?
What is your opinion of fertility treatment?
JustAnotherGen
(31,798 posts)If I could eradicate my HLA-B27 gene - I would.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Hunter-Gathers were doing controlled burns to improve the productivity of their territories tens of thousands of years ago.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)Eradicating Smallpox, Polio and other nasty diseases is " messing with nature". Should we have not done that?
Considering how many people suffer from genetic illnesses, don't you think they would love to never have them in the first place?
We have been messing with nature since we first climbed down from the trees.
FFS, some people on the Left are as bad as the RW when it comes to anti-science rhetoric.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Man was not meant to fry the gentle potato!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)This is the part where I ask if all this trouble was worth it instead of adoption...
And God help this "perfect" child if he develops some other kind of disease, or if the scientists got their math wrong...
muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)The desire of people to have children of their own is strong. Adoption also has complications about pressure on people or cultures to give up children.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Today a simple tweak to the mitochondria, tomorrow.....?
muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)like the vast majority of us have. There's very little variation in mtDNA, which is why it's an easy way to find out the spread of populations over thousands of years.
randome
(34,845 posts)This IS the next step in our evolution, just as building cities and spaceships has been.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Don't ever underestimate the long-term effects of a good night's sleep.[/center][/font][hr]
Xipe Totec
(43,889 posts)JI7
(89,244 posts)Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)Genetic material from the father, intact, was combined with genetic material from the mother, intact and placed in an egg from a donor, with it's genetic material removed. The mitochondrial dna, which is completely separate from the chromosomal dna, came from the donor egg. That's where the sensational "three parents" headlines come from. There was NO gene splicing done.
Those that are fearful of this are showing their ignorance of how cells work.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)is doing things because of tradition. Not allowing people to ask questions that you don't approve of, and attempting to shame them with name calling, that's usually frowned upon. It's a little on the fundamentalist side.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)But let them be based in rational thought processes, not just emotion based rhetoric of "Ooh, I'm scared".
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)They're always going to be from the emotional side rather than they strict fact side. Even the but it saves children, or keeps people alive longer reasons for doing this or that is based on emotion. It's not like we're running low on people.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Several eggs enuclicated, parts discarded, several that failed midrange, and then failures when some embryos were not 'normal'. On top of that the parents lost two children and this child may develop the defect anyway.
"used this approach to create five embryos, only one of which developed normally"
"1% of remaining mutated DNA may replicate to higher percentage & cause the disease in future"