Abstract
Nuclear DNA from human eggs that harbour mutations in the DNA of organelles called mitochondria has been successfully transferred to donor eggs, bringing the prospect of therapy for mitochondrial diseases a step closer. See Letter p.270 Mitochondrial replacement techniques (MRT) could potentially be used to avoid mother-to-child transmission of mitochondria carrying disease-causing mutations. Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues have investigated the outcome of MRT using oocytes from women from families with common mtDNA-associated syndromes and by transferring meiotic spindle from patient oocytes to healthy donor oocytes. Although donor mtDNA replaced the patient mtDNA efficiently and was stably maintained in embryonic stem cells (ES cells) derived from most embryos, some ES cell lines lost donor mtDNA. The authors' analysis suggests that polymorphisms in mtDNA could be associated with preferential replication and could be cause the amplification of specific maternal haplotype.
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