Superchild was reportedly born in UK in what appears to be a medical wonder. This child, who carries three sets of DNA, will not develop any genetic disorders. A ground-breaking IVF treatment was carried out by medical professionals to shield the inheritance of incurable disorders, The Guardian reported.
Using tissue from healthy female donors' eggs, a procedure known as mitochondrial donation therapy (MDT) produces IVF embryos that are free of dangerous abnormalities that their mothers contain and have a tendency to pass on to their offspring.
This foetus is safeguarded genetically by the mother whose womb it developed, indicating that the disorders that damage the mother's body won't affect the kid. This embryo contains sperm and egg mitochondria from both biological parents. Any cell's mitochondria are its powerhouse.
The child's body includes 37 genes from a third female donor's genetic material along with the DNA from both parents. In other words, this baby actually has three parents. However, this child's body contains 99.8% of its parent's DNA.
READ | Asteroid warning! Massive 60-foot asteroid heading towards Earth on May 9, but....
Treatment for mitochondrial replacement, or MRT, is another name for mitochondrial donation. The doctors in England are the ones who created and use this technique. The Newcastle Fertility Centre in England is where this child was born.
The project's goal was to enable pregnant mothers with altered mitochondria to avoid transferring genetic diseases to their offspring. Harmful mutations in the "batteries" can have an impact on all of a woman's offspring since individuals receive all of their mitochondria through their mothers.
For afflicted women, having a child naturally is frequently a gamble. Because only a small part of the altered mitochondria are inherited by some newborns, they may be healthy at birth. However, some people could inherit significantly more and end up with serious, deadly conditions. Mitochondrial diseases harm one in every 6,000 newborns.
What is the MDT procedure?
In the beginning, eggs from the afflicted mother and a healthy female donor are fertilised with the father's sperm. The donor egg's nuclear DNA is then taken out and put with the couple's infused egg. The resulting egg contains all of the genes from both parents, but rather than the mother's defective mitochondria, it contains healthy mitochondria from the donor. After that, the womb receives the implant. The process carries some dangers.
READ | Archaeologists find 7000-year-old road inside sea; list of items found