Definitely 2016 type stuff right here. You read the headline right, now read the story after the jump.
After 20 years of 4 miscarriages and the death of their two very young children, a Jordanian couple went with the last resort and it was to perform the first procedure ever to conceive a child with three parents.
The Muslim couple had to do the procedure in Mexico, because it is not legal in the United States. New York City-based New Hope Fertility Center team performed the operation, led by John Zhang, despite possible health problems for the baby. The baby’s mother has a genetic disorder called Leigh syndrome that affects the nervous system, and of which took the lives of both of her children.
According to the New Scientist, this how it works:
“The method approved in the UK is called pronuclear transfer and involves fertilizing both the mother’s egg and a donor egg with the father’s sperm. Before the fertilised eggs start dividing into early-stage embryos, each nucleus is removed. The nucleus from the donor’s fertilised egg is discarded and replaced by that from the mother’s fertilised egg.”
However, the couple did not want to destroy two embryos, so they had the doc perform the procedure a little bit differently:
“[Zhang] removed the nucleus from one of the mother’s 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 father’s sperm. Five embryos were created and the one that developed was implanted in the mother.”
The baby was born this year on April 6th, with less than 1% of the child’s mitochondria having his mother’s genetic mutation. It’s when 18% of mitochondria are affected that there’s something wrong.
Crazy to me…just wait on the movie about it now.
