You may have recently seen headlines floating around like “3-PARENT BABIES APPROVED IN UK” and thought, “Gosh, how on earth does that work?” Well, don’t worry, it doesn’t mean that there will be a surge in threesomes or that babies can magically be conceived by three random people. No, it’s a very sensationalist way of saying that it is now possible for women who carry the genes for inherited diseases in their mitochondria to have healthy babies, in a process called Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT).
Okay, so first, if you don’t have a biochemical background, you might be asking “What the heck are mitochondria?” Well, like your body having organs, your individual cells have organelles and one of the most important organelles is the mitochondria. There are lots of them in one cell, and they are basically your cell’s batteries, and pump out energy for the cell to use in its various processes.
However, mitochondria are pretty special, because they carry their own DNA, which is separate from your cells’ DNA. Don’t get confused though, your mitochondria are still *yours,* and the DNA they contain is yours as well. But whereas nuclear DNA (found in the nucleus/the ”brain-like” organelle of your cells) is inherited from your mum and your dad, your mitochondrial DNA is passed through your mother only, and so you have the same mitochondrial DNA as your mum, and her mum, and her mum etc.
This is pretty cool, apart from when you have a disease inherited through your mitochondrial DNA. So, in short, these “3-parent babies” as they’ve been coined, will basically have a healthy woman’s mitochondrial DNA as well as the nuclear DNA from the mother (who carries the mitochondrial disease) and the father.
Mitochondrial DNA is about 0.1% of a person’s overall DNA and doesn’t influence how the individual looks or their characteristics – it literally just contains information for the mitochondria to work correctly, and it’s the rest of your DNA in your nucleus that contains all the vital stuff that makes you *you*.
About one in 10,000 babies are affected by mitochondrial diseases. As you can imagine, when something goes wrong with the energy production in your body, it’s organs like the heart, brain, lungs and muscles which take the toll the most, because they need so much energy to perform correctly. This is why many who inherit mitochondrial diseases tend to die very young.
So, hopefully that’s helped you understand a bit better, and I personally think it’s wonderful news for the UK that we’re the first country to approve this treatment – allowing mothers to conceive safely and have healthy babies! The treatment has been pioneered by scientists at the University of Newcastle, and they now hope to treat 25 women a year!
Edited by Jenine Tudtud
Sources:
http://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/mitochondria_1050x700.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/14/article-0-09231865000005DC-362…
https://heiscomingblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/ivf-three-parents-278…
https://i0.wp.com/fusion.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/150224-three-par…