Coming soon: Mitochondrial transplants

Question

Singapore could become the second country to legalize mitochondrial replacement therapy

It's intended for use to avoid rare genetically transmitted disorders carried in the mitochondrion. FYI.

Comments

Typo in title, please edit: Mitochonrial => Mitochondrial.

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Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out.

Answer 1

It's already here. See https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/299758/for-our-genetic-genealogists-mitochondrial-donation-here

Comments

Its already legal in the UK for mothers with rare mitrochondrial disease. The first 2 potential recipients were selected earlier this year https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/01/permission-given-to-create-britains-first-three-person-babies
According to the Daily Mail (not always a good source), a clinic in the Ukraine has sucessfully used the technique on previously infertile women .They also say that it is being marketed in the US.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5814055/Ukrainian-clinic-successfully-created-FOUR-three-parent-babies-infertile-women.html#

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In that vein (complicating genetic genealogy) there are even greater problems on the horizon: Scientific American published an article Healthy Baby Mice Produced from Mouse Mom's Skin Cells which represents proof of concept for turning any somatic cell into germ cells. Since we males are XY that means our cells could be taken and transformed into eggs - a gay couple could end up reproducing by having one provide the transformed egg and the other the sperm. It's not going to happen soon, but one thing we can be sure of, if it's possible somebody will do it at some time. And then we are stuck with our male/female software dichotomy.

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Cool, about time I say. Wiki's dichotomous software is already out of date. To wit  transwomen who have tested YDNA are not accepted.

And there are people, infertile for one reason or another, who can, with this advance using cells, produce offspring.

There is another genetic advance not being discussed.

Gene Ediing via CRISPR. It seems that there is a virus that can be used to cut out a disease carrying portion of a gene and insert a new portion.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=crispr+gene+editing&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

This could be the end of genetically transmitted diseases, then again I am sure that only the extremely wealthy and politically connected need apply.