The world’s first child with genes from three people has been born to a Jordanian couple. The baby was delivered in Mexico as there are no laws in the country that could block the revolutionary technique. The five-month-old boy carries not only the DNA from both his parents but also a tiny piece of genetic code from a donor in order to avoid inheriting a genetic condition that could kill him.
The controversial procedure, which was carried out by a US medical team, has only been legally approved in the UK. Embryologists are hopeful that this could be a breakthrough for millions who face the risk of giving birth to terminally ill children. In this particular case, the parents had already lost two children to Leigh’s syndrome (their first at the age of six and the second at eight months), reports the Daily Mail.
Leigh’s syndrome is a serious neurological condition which adversely affects the nervous system. Children afflicted by the disease typically don’t survive beyond three years of age. It was discovered via tests that the boy’s mother carries genes for the disease. The technique used to ‘engineer’ this baby is known as spindle nuclear transfer.
Dr John Zhang, who lead the medical team from New York City’s New Hope Fertility Center, explains that they removed the nucleus from one of his mother’s eggs, which was later inserted into a donor egg that had its nucleus removed. This ‘egg’ was then fertilized with sperm from the father.
