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'Three-parent baby' is born in U.S.

Posted September. 29, 2016 07:03,   

Updated September. 29, 2016 07:22

한국어
A world’s first “three-parent baby” was born as the baby has two biological mothers and one biological father. A U.S.-based medical team combined two eggs from different mothers and then fertilized the new egg with father’s sperm. Accordingly, the new-born baby has genetic information of three people.

The research team at the New Hope Fertility Center based in New York City unveiled the world’s first three-parent baby Abrahim Hassan on Tuesday – who was born in Mexico to avoid some ethical restrictions in the mainland U.S. The boy was reportedly born five months ago on April 6, and the team said he was growing healthy.

Hassan’s parents sought out a help through a rare genetic mutation technology only to have a healthier baby, because the boy’s mother carries genes for “Leigh syndrome,” disorder that affects the central nervous system. They wanted to have a family but had four miscarriages in the past 10 years, and two babies died in six or eight months after birth. The medical team decided to remove the nucleus from the mother’s egg and inserted it into a donor egg as genes for Leigh syndrome are inherited through mitochondrial DNA not nuclear DNA. Leigh syndrome is known as a mitochondrial disorder as it is caused by mitochondrial mutations.

The team used five eggs and fertilized them with father’s sperm to create embryos. Only one embryo developed normally and was implanted in the mother's womb.

A three-parent baby technique creates some ethical controversies as it changes genetic characteristics of a human body. “We need to wait to see if dysfunctional mitochondria with genetic mutations gradually increase in number,” said Prof. Bert Smeets, director of the Genome Centre at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. “To save lives is the ethical thing to do,” said Dr. John Zhang, who led the medical team at the New Hope Fertility Center.



신수빈 동아사이언스기자sbshin@donga.com