CGS-authored
BEAVERTON, ORE. — To most people, the word “mitochondria” is only dimly familiar, the answer to a test question in some bygone high-school biology class. But to Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the mysterious power producers inside every human cell are a lifelong obsession.
“My colleagues, they say I’m a ‘mitochondriac,’ that I only see this one thing,” he said recently in his modest, clutter-free office at Oregon Health and Science University. He smiled. “Maybe they are right.”
With a name that most Americans can’t pronounce (it is Shoe-KHRAHT Mee-tuhl-EE-pov) and an accent that sounds like the villain’s in a James Bond film, Dr. Mitalipov, 52, has shaken the field of genetics by perfecting a version of the world’s tiniest surgery: removing the nucleus from a human egg and placing it into another. In doing so, this Soviet-born scientist has drawn the ire of bioethicists and the scrutiny of federal regulators.
The procedure is intended to help women conceive children without passing on genetic defects in their cellular mitochondria. Such mutations are rare, but they can cause severe problems, including neurological damage, heart...
“My colleagues, they say I’m a ‘mitochondriac,’ that I only see this one thing,” he said recently in his modest, clutter-free office at Oregon Health and Science University. He smiled. “Maybe they are right.”
With a name that most Americans can’t pronounce (it is Shoe-KHRAHT Mee-tuhl-EE-pov) and an accent that sounds like the villain’s in a James Bond film, Dr. Mitalipov, 52, has shaken the field of genetics by perfecting a version of the world’s tiniest surgery: removing the nucleus from a human egg and placing it into another. In doing so, this Soviet-born scientist has drawn the ire of bioethicists and the scrutiny of federal regulators.
The procedure is intended to help women conceive children without passing on genetic defects in their cellular mitochondria. Such mutations are rare, but they can cause severe problems, including neurological damage, heart...