World's first baby born using 'revolutionary' three-parent DNA technique
Video report by ITV News Science Correspondent Alok Jha
The world's first baby conceived with DNA from three parents has been born.
The baby boy, who is now five months old, was born using a controversial technique which allows parents with rare genetic mutations to have healthy babies, the New Scientist reports.
The baby's Jordanian parents were treated by a US-based team in Mexico.
His mother carries genes for Leigh syndrome, a disorder that affects the developing nervous system, and was responsible for the deaths of her first two children.
Dr John Zhang and his team at the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City helped the parents using a process called spindle nuclear transfer.
This involved removing the nucleus from one of the mother's eggs and inserting it into a donor egg that had its own nucleus removed.
The resulting egg, with nuclear DNA from the mother and mitochondrial DNA from a donor, was then fertilised with the father's sperm.
The doctors used this approach to create five embryos. Only one developed normally, and was implanted into the mother.
"This is great news and a huge deal - it's revolutionary," stem cell expert Dusko Ilic, of King's College London told The New Scientist.
The process has not been approved in the US, so the couple's medical team had to carry out the procedure in Mexico.
The only "three-parent" technique approved in the UK is pronuclear transfer.
Researchers in Newcastle have been at the forefront of using the three-parent procedure to combat rare hereditary diseases.
The UK-approved process involves fertilising both the mother’s egg and a donor egg with the father’s sperm.
Before the fertilised eggs start dividing into embryos, each nucleus is removed. The nucleus from the donor’s fertilised egg is discarded and replaced by that from the mother’s fertilised egg.
The parents disapproved of this technique because they were opposed to the destruction of embryos on religious grounds.