Science
Babies born with genetic material from three people
A two-week-old newborn baby’s hand rests in his mother’s hand. A baby has been born in the UK with the genetic makeup of three people. photo
© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
The goal is to avoid hereditary damage: In artificial insemination, individual cells are exchanged. However, 99.8 percent of the genetic material comes from the mother and father.
For the first time in Great Britain, babies were born carrying the genetic material of three people. This emerges from a report by the “Guardian” on Wednesday. Accordingly, when asked by the newspaper, the Embryology Authority (HFEA) confirmed that a small number of babies conceived by artificial insemination had already been born under an appropriate program. It is not the first time in the world that babies have been born with three genetic parents, as there were similar cases in Mexico in 2016 and in Greece in 2019.
The technique of Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy is used to prevent damage in children that could result from inherited defects in the mother’s so-called mitochondrial DNA. Experts remove the cell nucleus of a fertilized egg cell from the mother and insert it into an egg cell from another woman, whose cell nucleus – but not the mitochondria – had previously been removed. Mitochondria are cell power plants that also have genetic material.
However, the genome of the egg donor is limited to a very small number of genes in the child. 99.8 percent of the genome comes from the mother and father.
The program was implemented by the Newcastle Fertility Centre. However, the institute did not want to comment on the births, citing the personal rights of those affected, as the “Guardian” reported. According to the paper, one in 6,000 babies is affected by mitochondrial gene damage.