First 'three person baby' born using new method

A human egg injected with a micro-needle that contains a single spermImage copyright







Three person babies


Some women carry genetic defects in mitochondria and they can pass these on to their children. In the case of the Jordanian family, it was a disorder called Leigh Syndrome that would have proved fatal to any baby conceived.

Scientists have devised a number of ways to circumvent this problem.

The US team, who travelled to Mexico to carry out the procedure because there are no laws there that prohibit it, used a method that repairs the mitochondria in the mother’s egg before fertilising it in the lab with the father’s sperm.

Their technique uses a healthy donor egg to provide healthy mitochondria.

The result is a baby with 0.1% of their DNA from the donor (mitochondrial DNA) and all the genetic code for things like hair and eye colour from the mother and father.

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It’s not the first time scientists have tried out a method to repair mitochondria and achieved healthy babies. In the late 90s began experimenting with a technique called cytoplasmic transfer which involves injecting healthy mitochondria into eggs.

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