MEET THE INFANTS BORN USING DNA FROM THREE PEOPLE 

Did you know that the world’s first baby using the mitochondria donation technique that involves three people's DNA was born in the United States in 2016?

Conception of a child is made possible from the male and female combined sperm and egg, called a zygote. The zygote contains all of the genetic information (DNA) needed to become a baby. Half the DNA comes from the mother's egg and half from the father's sperm. But how about a third DNA?

The United Kingdom’s fertility regulator, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) announced on Wednesday, May 10, 2023, the births of UK’s first babies created using an experimental technique combining DNA from three people, in an effort to prevent the children from inheriting rare genetic diseases or being born with devastating mitochondrial diseases.

The babies born had three people’s DNA for the first time in the UK. However, while most of the child’s DNA came from the parents, about 0.1 per cent was from a third person, a woman.

According to the HFEA, less than five babies have been born in Britain from the scientific technique that is designed to prevent children from being born with devastating mitochondrial diseases. Such disorders occur when mitochondria fail to carry out their function of producing energy for cells in the body. 

The genetic defects can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, heart problems and intellectual disabilities. Other symptoms include poor growth, weakness, failure to thrive, spasms and slow deterioration. About one in 200 children in the UK is born with a mitochondrial disorder. To date, 32 patients have been authorised to receive such treatment.

In 2015, the UK became the world’s first country to adopt legislation specifically regulating methods to help prevent women with faulty mitochondria – the energy source in a cell – from passing defects on to their babies. The UK is the first country to allow mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) after HFEA’s approval in 2017. Its CEO, Peter Thompson, said mitochondrial donation offers families with severe inherited mitochondrial illness the possibility of a healthy child.

For a woman with faulty mitochondria, scientists take genetic material from her egg or embryo, which is then transferred into a donor egg or embryo that still has healthy mitochondria but had the rest of its key DNA removed. The fertilised embryo is then transferred into the womb of the mother. The genetic material from the donated egg comprises less than 1 percent of the child created from this technique.

Mitochondrial donation treatment offers families with severe inherited mitochondrial illness the possibility of a healthy child,” the UK fertility regulator said in a statement on Wednesday, while also adding that it was still “early days” but it hoped the scientists involved, at Newcastle University, would soon publish details of the treatment.

The UK requires every woman undergoing the treatment to receive approval from the HFEA. The regulator has said that to be eligible, families must have no other available options for avoiding passing on genetic disease.

Many critics have opposed the artificial reproduction techniques, arguing there are other ways for people to avoid passing on diseases to their children, such as egg donation or screening tests, and that the experimental methods have not yet been proven safe.

Others warn that tweaking the genetic code this way could be a slippery slope that eventually leads to designer babies for parents who not only want to avoid inherited diseases but to have taller, stronger, smarter or children with particular aesthetic traits.

Scientists in Europe published research earlier this year that showed in some cases, the small number of abnormal mitochondria that are inevitably carried over from the mother’s egg to the donor’s can reproduce when the baby is in the uterus, which could ultimately lead to a genetic disease.

Earlier, Doctors in the United States announced the birth of the world’s first baby using the mitochondria donation technique in 2016, after the treatment was conducted in Mexico.

Image source: stock adobe

Sources:

https://dailypost.ng/2023/05/10/baby-with-dna-from-3-people-born-in-uk/

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/5/10/first-baby-born-using-dna-from-three-people-uk

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002398.htm