3- PARENT BABY
WHAT IS 3- PARENT BABY ?
- A Human offspring produced from the genetic material of one man and two women through the use of assisted reproductive technologies, specifically mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) and three-person in vitro fertilization (IVF).
- In general, the reproductive technologies used to produce three-parent babies focus on replacing or otherwise reducing the effects of mutations that occur in the DNA of cellular organelles known as mitochondria, which reside in the cell cytoplasm.
PROCESS OF 3-PARENT BABY :
- Mitochondrial replacement therapy-
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- Ooplasmic transfer entails the injection of a small amount of cytoplasm from an egg cell (ovum) donated by a healthy woman into the mother’s egg.
- This is then fertilized by the father’s sperm and implanted into the mother’s uterus using IVF.
- Because ooplasmic transfer involves the mixing of cytoplasm from maternal and donor eggs—the health and hereditary risks of which could be significant—interest in its potential use to overcome infertility or mitochondrial disease has declined.
Furthermore, other techniques have supplanted ooplasmic transfer, the two most significant of which are maternal spindle transfer and pronuclear transfer.
Maternal spindle transfer :
- The nucleus is removed from a donor egg, leaving behind the cytoplasm.
- The nucleus from the mother’s egg cell is then inserted into the donor egg.
- The egg is fertilized with the father’s sperm and then transferred to the mother’s uterus for normal gestation, similar to other IVF procedures.
Pronuclear transfer:
- The mother’s egg is first fertilized with the father’s sperm, producing a zygote.
- The pronuclei of the egg and sperm are then removed from the zygote and inserted into a donor egg that has been fertilized and has had its own nucleus removed (a pronucleus is the nucleus of the egg or sperm at the stage of fertilization prior to nucleus fusion).
- The zygote derived from the donor egg is then implanted into the mother’s uterus.
MORE ABOUT 3-PARENT BABY :
- While 99 per cent of the DNA comes from their two parents, around 0.1 per cent is from a third person — a donor woman.
- The unique fertility technique is touted to help prevent children from being born with “devastating mitochondrial diseases“.
- Notably, mitochondrial diseases are incurable and can be fatal within days or even hours of birth, if diagnosed in a newborn (although they can develop at any age).
- This three-person IVF procedure is known to help eliminate mitochondrial diseases that are passed on from mother to child.
ABOUT MITOCHONDRIAL DISEASES:
- Mitochondria or the power membrane of a cell are unique; they have their own DNA called mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA.
- “Mutations in this mtDNA or in nuclear DNA (DNA found in the nucleus of a cell) can cause mitochondrial disorder”.
- “Mitochondrial diseases are chronic (long-term), genetic, often inherited disorders that occur when mitochondria fail to produce enough energy for the body to function properly”.
- Mitochondrial diseases can affect almost any part of the body, including the cells of the brain, nerves, muscles, kidneys, heart, liver, eyes, ears or pancreas.
SYLLABUS: PRELIMS- PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
