There are multiple ways traits are inherited from parents to offspring, the one that will be the focus of this article will be traits that are inherited from the mitochondrial DNA. A majority of the mitochondria is inherited from the mother to the offspring, this leads to a disadvantage in the case where the mother may have a mitochondrial disorder such as mitochondrial myopathy which the offspring will inherit.
Scientist's from Britain's Newcastle University to create children using DNA from the mother, father, and a donor female to prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial disorders. This technique is done by extracting the nucleus DNA from the egg of the mother and is inserted into the female donor egg. The DNA from the female donor egg is extracted before inserting the mothers DNA. By performing this technique the end result is the embryo ending up with DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from the donor female.
Although this is a new form of preventative medicine, I believe this can have some trouble being accepted worldwide for at least another decade since this technique can lead to not only preventing disorders but also to designing what your own child can look like by removing certain sections of DNA and adding a section of a donors DNA for certain traits that are desired to be expressed.
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