Baby born with 3 different DNA
POSTED May 24, 2023
Recently, the first baby with three different DNAs has been born in the UK.
This may seem bizarre, perhaps even impossible. However, in 2015, the UK became the first country to adopt a legislation regulating method to help prevent faulty mitochondria, the energy source in the cell, from passing defects onto their babies. Essentially, this breakthrough allows the bypass of faulty DNA.
According to NBC, “ About one in 200 children in Britain is born with a mitochondrial disorder.” So far, only 32 patients have received authorization for this treatment. Some families have even lost multiple children due to the disease, so this treatment seems to be their only option. And according to BBC, “ Defective mitochondria fail to fuel the body and lead to brain damage, muscle wasting, heart failure, and blindness.” The procedure isn’t very complicated, what they do is remove the parent’s nuclear material from the embryo. Next, they take a donor embryo and remove the nucleus. Finally, they put the parent’s nucleus into the donor embryo thus saving it from a mitochondrial disease.
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