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The first baby created from three genetic parents has been born in the UK.
To prevent inherited disease doctors created a “three-parent baby” by using a technique known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT).
The procedure, aimed at stopping a mother from passing on defective genes in the mitochondria – tiny power plants in cells that supply energy – to her child, involves giving a woman an IVF baby with DNA from three individuals.
Nuclear DNA was given to the child from the mother and father, which define key characteristics such as personality and eye colour.
They were also given a tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA provided by the “third parent”.
The Newcastle Fertility Centre was granted the first licence for the controversial therapy in 2017, after MPs and peers voted to allow it in 2015 under the Human Fertilisation and Embryonic Act.
The regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said less than five births had been recorded as a result of mitochondrial transfer procedures.
It said giving a precise figure “could lead to the identification of a person to whom the HFEA owes a duty of confidentiality”. The data was accurate up to 20 April.
The Guardian was the first to report on the MDT birth after submitting a freedom of information request to the HFEA. The paper said it understood the pandemic deterred some donors from coming forwards and affected other couples hoping to undergo the therapy.
The Newcastle clinic’s procedure is carried out by transferring the genetic material that effectively encodes a baby’s identity to a donor egg whose own nuclear DNA has been removed.
This produces an embryo containing healthy mitochondria from the donor and nuclear DNA from the baby’s mother and father.
Mitochondria hold only about 0.1% of a person’s DNA which is always…
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