Three Parents Contribute to Experimental Human Embryo

gihan_ripper writes "It sounds like the storyline from a cheesy film, but a human embryo has been created using the genetic material from one man and two women. A team from Newcastle University, England, developed the technique in the hope that it could be used to prevent diseases caused by faulty mitochondria. Their experiment started with two ingredients: first, a left over (and 'severely abnormal') embryo from an IVF treatment; second, a donor egg from another woman. The donor egg has all but the mitochondrial DNA removed, then a nucleus from the embryo is inserted into the egg. Effectively, this results in a mitochondria transplant. 'While any baby born through this method would have genetic elements from three people, the nuclear DNA that influences appearance and other characteristics would not come from the woman providing the donor egg. However, the team only have permission to carry out the lab experiments and as yet this would not be allowed to be offered as a treatment.'"

Re:Interesting alternative application?

[Loibisch]

from TFA:

It could ensure women with genetic defects do not pass the diseases on to their children.

Probably should have read it properly first :P
Nothing to see here, move along. :)

Re:asexual reproduction - sexual reproduction ?

[jbeaupre]

You're correct, this study was replacing faulty DNA. But if it's just a segment that is faulty, why replace everything? In many cases, the mitochodria may be worthless, so complete replacement is necessary. But in some cases, having the old one there is like keeping a backup system around. One gets half the job done, the other completes it. Granted, there won't be any DNA swap, so you miss any chance of dumping bad genes over generations. But I still wonder if there could be a net benefit.

Re:This should be good

[mrxak]

Assuming it has the right number of chromosomes, and all the basic genetic material is in the right places, it shouldn't be any different than anyone else. It just won't have whatever genetic disease they're trying to eliminate.

If it's unethical, it's because this is a slippery slope to picking the color of your kid's eyes, and how fast they can run. Think about Gattaca.

Re:asexual reproduction - sexual reproduction ?

[clonan]

That doesn't really work with Mitochondria.

Mitochondria are effecticly self contained bacteria with their own genome, rRNA, and other support structures as if they were real cells. Infact mitochondria replicate like cells inside the cytoplasm. Now they also requier some proteins that are encoded and imported from the nucleus, but they don't release anything except carbon dioxide, water and ATP.

Even if one mitocondria can only do half of the kreb cycle while it's neighbor can do the other half, they still couldn't coolaberate and function as a funcitonal unit.

So long as there are working Mitochondria, the defective one are just wasted resources.

Of course it's legal

[mbessey]

Not that this will necessarily make you feel any better about the ethics of the situation, but the embryo they used was a reject from in-vitro fertilization. It was going to be destroyed anyway, regardless of whether the experiment was performed. It's a fact that the majority of embryos produced for IVF are never brought to term.

Re:This should be good

[calcapt]

This is nowhere near designer baby capabilities that were prominently featured in GATTACA. This is simply the swapping out of somatic nuclear/genetic material from one cell to the other, taking advantage of the fact that mitochondrial lineages propogate clonally. This isn't a genetic disease in the sense that you're thinking; it's not a disease found in the human genome. It's a disease isolated to the genome of one of our organelles ("organs" for our cells).

Quick bio recap: I don't know if you remember much from high school biology, but there are 2 sources of DNA in our cells, mitochondria and nucleus. The experiment in the article is essentially swapping mitochondria between 2 people, allowing someone to live without a potentially life threatening mitochondrial defect. In other words, once the mitochondria have been swapped (or in this case, genomic DNA), the person SHOULD develop as he would if he had normal mitochondria in the first place. The only reason I say SHOULD is because we don't know how the RNA content of the genome receiving cell will affect development (as opposed to maternal RNA in the donor cell). But, the person's genetic make up would be the same in both scenarios. I cannot emphasize enough that there is no specificity in what genes are transferred; you cannot pick and choose what gene gets moved, and from what I know, I don't think you ever CAN. You're moving a whole GENOME here.

Now, unless different mitochondrial lineages can affect ATP production to fuel bodily/cellular processes, conferring an advantage somehow by having more efficient ATP production or what not, this type of treatment isn't going to generate the same class divisions and prejudices you saw in GATTACA. Lastly, the kid who results from this treatment wouldn't be a mutant; mutations are changes in DNA sequence, structure that prevent proper transcription and translation into protein. These would be examples of genetic diseases, which you mentioned earlier. To further elaborate, cancerous cells could be considered mutants because of a defect in it's DNA sequence, but a person who has cancer isn't a mutant; only a subset of that person's cells, the cancerous ones, are mutant.

Hrm. This is OT, but you wouldn't happen to be mrxak from AmbrosiaSW forums and Aftermath, would you?