Three's A Crowd?
University of Newcastle
Researchers at the University of Newcastle are once again at the centre of controversy after gaining permission to create a human embryo with the genetic material from three parents.
The team are hoping the research will stop mothers passing on mitochondrial diseases to their unborn baby.
Mitochondria are compartments which are found in all animal and plant cells. They are the 'batteries' of our cells - the site of respiration, converting food into energy, enabling living things to grow and live.
Mitochondria have their own DNA which is inherited from the mother only. Faulty mitochondrial DNA causes around 50 known diseases which can lead to disability and death. About one in 5,000 children and adults are at risk from developing a mitochondrial disease and currently no treatment for these diseases exists.
The researchers will be looking at mitochondrial myopathy which causes muscle weakness and wasting and makes it difficult for sufferers to move. They will take the nucleus - containing DNA from the mother and father - from a fertilised egg and implant into a donor egg, which has had its own nucleur DNA removed.
The embryo should then develop normally. A child created from this technique would inherit nuclear DNA from its parents and mitochondrial DNA from the egg donor and would therefore physically resemble their parents. However, the researchers will not be able to implant the three parent embryo into a woman.
The procedure is banned in the USA but in 2003 a Sino-American team in China achieved a pregnancy but not a live birth using the technique. The granting of the licence in this country has created debate. Some people believe the scientists are being allowed to play with early human life and have denounced it as the first steps towards genetic engineering. Others believe that we have a moral obligation to stop suffering in children at risk of developing mitochondrial disease and the Muscular Dystropy Campaign greeted the news with delight.
Submitted by: Sarah McLeod, 12 September 2005
