Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment not really genetic modification (Score 4) 294

If I understand the article correctly, DNA is NOT being inserted into mitochondria. The children are not "genetically modified" in the traditional sense. The mitochondria from mother 1 had a defect, so mitochondria from mother 2 was injected into the haploid egg or single cell diploid embryo. The term for this is cybrid (CYtoplasmic hyBRID). This is a technique that's been used before when working with cell lines that have had their mitochondria killed off through exposure to ethedium bromide for ~3 months (rho0 cells). You kill off the mito, then repopulate the cell with mitochondria you want. In this case, it sounds like the children have a mixed population of mitochondria. This would mean that females could still pass the defect to their offspring.

Slashdot Top Deals

According to all the latest reports, there was no truth in any of the earlier reports.

Working...