From: Kathryn Aegis (aegis@igc.apc.org)
Date: Tue Nov 17 1998 - 21:31:02 MST
The second post regarding developments unveiled at the annual meeting of the
American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
On October 8, Jamie Grifo, John Zhang and Hui Liu of New York University
announced that for the first time genes from an infertile woman's egg were
transferred into another egg, the egg was fertilized with sperm and the egg
was then implanted into the infertile woman's womb to maturate. If this
results in a child, the child will have two genetic mothers, although one
will have contributed more genetic material and will clearly constitute the
dominant genetic mother.
The actual technique involves removing one egg each from the fertile and the
infertile woman. The nuclei from both eggs are then removed. The nucleus
from the healthy egg is transferred to the infertile egg. The reconstituted
egg is then fertilized (with sperm, wouldn't you know.) The baby would
carry nuclear genes from the infertile woman and mitochondrial genes from
the donor woman.
This technique was developed after earlier experiments with reviving
infertile eggs with younger, healthier cytoplasm from donor eggs.
This technique is considered similar to cloning, similar enough to be banned
in California and any other state that decides to ban the same cloning
procedure that produced Dolly.
Kathryn Aegis
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