Is a therapy designed to treat mitochondrial disease setting its sights on age?
        
            By Alison Motluk, 
                HeyReprotech [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
             | 04. 30. 2019
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            Mitochondria provide the power for our cells, and when they malfunction, it can be serious. So scientists have developed experimental treatments that use healthy mitochondria from donor eggs. 
In one variation, the nuclear DNA is removed from a donor egg and replaced with the nuclear DNA from an intended mother's egg; the donor egg's mitochondria, left behind in the cytoplasm, provide the power pack. The egg is then fertilized. In another variation, both an egg from a donor and an egg from the mother are fertilized before that swap takes place. Almost all of a person's DNA is in the nucleus, and almost all traits are determined by this nuclear DNA, but mitochondria also contain a small amount of DNA. This means that any child born from such a therapy will inherit DNA from three people — the mother, the father and the donor — which has given rise to terms like 'three-person IVF' and 'three-parent baby.'
The treatments have been controversial since the outset, because it's not yet known whether there will be unintended side effects. It's not easy...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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            Paula Amato & Shoukhrat Mitalipov
[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
The lead authors were Shoukhrat Mitalipov, recently described here as “a push-the-envelope biologist,” and his long-term colleague Paula Amato. (Recall that in July the pair had co-published with...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Pam Belluck,  The New York Times | 10.17.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            Before dawn on a March morning, Doug Whitney walked into a medical center 2,000 miles from home, about to transform from a mild-mannered, bespectacled retiree into a superhuman research subject.
First, a doctor inserted a needle into his back to...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Zoeann Murphy,  The Washington Post | 10.01.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            MEXICO CITY — When she walked into an IVF clinic in June, Alin Quintana knew it would be the last time she would try to conceive a child. She had prepared herself spiritually and mentally for the visit: She had traveled to a nearby...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Rob Stein,  NPR | 09.30.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...