Scientists in Oregon Create Embryos With Three Genetic Parents

Thursday, October 25. 2012

Scientists in Oregon Create Embryos With Three Genetic Parents

Over the last year there have been many headlines about the debate in the United Kingdom on whether to create embryos with three genetic parents. Now the debate has come to America where scientists in Oregon have created embryos that have genetic material from two women and one man.

Why would scientists want to engineer an embryo with the genetic material from three people? Because they say it will “prevent” the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Not all of our DNA that we inherit is in the nuclei of the egg and sperm that join at fertilization. In the cytoplasm of our mother’s egg are mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own DNA called mtDNA. We inherit our mtDNA only from our mother because sperm’s mitochondria are dumped at conception. There are genetic mutations that cause very serious disease found in mtDNA and a woman with a such a mutation cannot help but pass this mutation on to her children.

Oregon scientists created a dozen human embryos using a technique called “maternal spindle transfer” which removes the nucleus of an egg from a woman with mitochondrial disease and places it into a donor egg with normal mtDNA. That genetically modified egg is then fertilized with the father’s sperm and a genetically modified embryo is the result. An embryo with the genetic material from two women and one man.

This modification has implications not only for the embryo but for future generations that cannot help but inherit the modification making this what is called germ-line genetic engineering.

Continue reading at Life News >>

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Genetic Engineering at 15:50 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

There would be nothing wrong with germ-line engineering, if they weren't doing it at the level of in-vitro. If they'd just modified the mother's faulty genes, then it'd just be common sense to make it so the cure was heritable.

Why did they decide to combat this condition via IVF, with all its risks and its typical embryo-attrition rates, and not gene therapy? Isn't it better to cure people, and let them have healthy children naturally, than to force them to come in for IVF procedures?

Well, except, I suppose, they get to charge more for successive IVF treatments than for a one-time gene therapy.

#1 Tom in AZ on 2012-10-27 09:07 (Reply)

You are right there is nothing inherently wrong with germ-line genetic engineering if it is done for therapeutic reasons, but I think ethically its going to be a hard one regardless of how it is achieved because of safety reasons for future generations.

I think docs find it easier to modify an embryo early on, or before conception instead of the harder task of finding a way to modify all eggs and their precursors with gene therapy in the ovary.

Scientists in Oregon Create Embryos With Three Genetic Parents

Mary Meets Dolly

Thursday, October 25. 2012

Scientists in Oregon Create Embryos With Three Genetic Parents

Home Pages

Follow or Contact me

Quicksearch

Recent Entries

Archives

Blogs of Interest

My ears are burning...

Categories

Blog Rings etc.