The birth of the first baby in the world conceived by assisted reproduction technique which uses DNA from three different fathers has come true, as revealed on Tuesday the scientific journal New Scientist.
The publication notes that it is Abrahim Hassan, a five month old baby, who was born fruit of a controversial method that uses the DNA of the father, mother and a donor or “second mother”. This technique, which allows parents with rare genetic mutations conceive healthy children, was approved in the UK in 2015. The experts in embryology explain that the birth of Abrahim Hassan, whose Jordanians parents were treated in Mexico by a medical team from the United States should promote the progress of these techniques worldwide. In this case, the baby’s mother, Ibtisam Shaban, carrying genes called Leigh, a deadly disorder that affects the developing nervous system syndrome.
The genes of the disease are found in mitochondrial DNA, which provides energy to the cells and transports 37 genes that are passed from mother to child. According to the article, about a quarter of mitochondrial DNA Shaban he had carried the mutation that causes the disease concerned. Although the mother of Abrahim is a healthy person, the syndrome caused the death of her first two babies, so with her husband, Mahmoud Hassan, requested the assistance of fertility specialist John Zhang and his team at the Center Fertilisation New Hope in New York.
The process that allowed the birth of Abrahim In theory there are several ways to perform this technique combines DNA from three parents, but the method adopted in the United Kingdom known as pronuclear transfer involves fertilizing the egg of the mother, of one donor and sperm from the father. By this technique, before the fertilized eggs begin to divide into embryos every nucleus is removed and then is discarded from the donor to replace the mother. However, this technique was not appropriate in the case of Shaban and Hassan, both Muslims, for religious reasons, as opposed to the destruction of two embryos.
Therefore, Zhang took a different approach in their treatment, which removed the nucleus from one of the eggs Shaban and inserted it into the egg of the donor, which had already been withdrawn its own kernel. The resulting egg with Shaban nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA from the donor is then fertilized with the sperm of the father. Thus five embryos, of which only one developed normally and the baby he was born Abrahim were created.
