Donor dna to correct gene defect

Angela

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Very exciting advancement in situations where the mother's mtDna is defective.

The couple already had two children with Leigh's syndrome. Why they would have tried again knowing she had mutated mtDna is beyond me, but that's another story.

"It is a terrible disease, Dr. Zhang said. Babies progressively lose their ability to move and breathe. The baby had a tracheotomy and a feeding tube, he said, and the parents had to suction the baby’s lungs every hour. The first baby died at age 6; the second baby at 8 months."

"The technique that led to the healthy birth was to move the DNA from an egg of the mother, who had mutated mitochondria, and place it in the egg of a healthy egg donor — after first removing the healthy donor’s nuclear DNA from her egg cell. Then that egg, with its healthy mitochondria and the mother’s DNA, could be fertilized."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/health/birth-of-3-parent-baby-a-success-for-controversial-procedure.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur
 

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