In Mexico, the first child was born who can unmistakably be considered the parents of three people at once - for the first time a special technique was used to conceive him.

Now the boy is already five months old, he, like all ordinary children, inherited DNA from his mother and father, as well as a tiny piece of the genetic code from a donor. American doctors (why American, we will tell below) used an unprecedented method of conception so that the child does not inherit the genetic diseases that his mother from Jordan carries in her genes.

According to experts, the current achievement marks the beginning of a new era in medicine and can help other families with rare genetic diseases. But at the same time, scientists warn that rigorous testing of a new and rather controversial technology called mitochondrial donation is needed.

Note that this is not the first time that specialists have created children who carry DNA from three people at once in their cells. The first peak in the use of such techniques occurred at the end of the 1990s. But today specialists have a completely new and significant method in their hands.

To clarify, mitochondria are tiny structures inside almost every cell in the body. They will transform nutrients into useful energy. Mitochondria have their own mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). It is clear that this molecule, like any other, may contain defects, and since mtDNA is passed down the female line, it is precisely the genetic defects of women that are passed on to children. So, in the case of the Jordanian family, it was a disorder called Leigh syndrome, a fatal disease that affects the development of the nervous system in children. The family had previously experienced four unsuccessful pregnancies, as well as the death of two children - one at the age of eight months, the other child was six years old.

Scientists have developed several to help such families. And to conduct one of them, a team of researchers from the United States went to Mexico, where there are no laws prohibiting the use methods of conception from three people.

During this procedure, the nucleus is removed from the mother's egg and transferred to the donor's egg, from which the nucleus has also been removed. The result is an egg with the mother's nuclear DNA and the donor's mitochondrial DNA. The egg is then fertilized with the sperm of the unborn child's father.

US geneticists said they were ready to begin experiments to create human embryos with DNA from three parents. The Sanitary Control Commission has already given permission to conduct such experiments. According to doctors, three parents are needed in order to replace pathological mitochondria in a human embryo, which is why a woman has unhealthy offspring.

Scientists intend to use three donors in the experiments - two women and men, who will become the parents of the unborn child. According to the researchers, this technique will help humanity get rid of some genetic diseases.

The gene includes all the hereditary information about a person and is located in chromosomes and mitochondria, while mitochondria are transmitted exclusively through the mother. It is for this reason that geneticists intend to replace them only in male embryos, which will allow future generations to avoid the manifestation of the third parent's DNA. In a child, 0.1% of the genes will belong to the third parent, but despite this, he will be considered born of three people - two mothers and one father.

Last year, similar experiments were approved by the House of Commons in the UK. According to scientists, this technique is necessary for women who have mitochondrial disease, as a result of which they cannot give birth to a healthy baby.

The media report that lesbians, homosexuals, bisexuals and transgenders have already shown interest in this work of scientists.

But in order to start experiments, one permission from the commission of the Sanitary Control Administration is not enough. According to the US federal law, studies of this nature are prohibited, and the Bioethics Commission, which includes representatives of various religious denominations, is also against such experiments. By the way, such work is also prohibited according to Islamic norms, the only exception is artificial insemination, when a woman, for health reasons, cannot become pregnant in a natural way, while a man and a woman must be in a legal relationship for a long time.

Orthodox representatives are also against these experiments, in addition, surrogate motherhood is also prohibited by the Orthodox, since the body of a woman, preparing for motherhood, undergoes tremendous changes. During pregnancy, a woman begins to become attached to a new life inside her, begins to love the child that is in her stomach, all these changes cannot be measured even with the most modern medical instruments.

But in the United States in recent years, the sphere of motherhood and family planning has undergone strong changes and attitudes towards this have become more consumerist, i.e. the birth of a child is evaluated from the side of usefulness.

By the way, in the United States, an organization operated quite legally, which was engaged in the sale of organs of unborn babies, while everything was financed from the federal budget. Declassified the "dirty" work of the organization activist David Dalaiden, who faces 20 years in prison for excessive curiosity.

Some experts do not rule out that the new genetic experiments with three parents are carried out for a slightly different purpose and may result in the creation of a new enterprise that brings high income.

• The technology, tested overseas, allows parents with genetic abnormalities to edit the mother's egg and, as a result, have a healthy child.
• Specialists from New York conducted a successful experiment in Mexican territory, because there are no laws prohibiting this. The technique is officially legalized only in the UK.

In fact, the miraculous birth took place five months ago, but only now experts have found it possible to declare the event a success. Like all people on planet Earth, a little boy has DNA with genes from both parents. However, in his hereditary code there is also a small fragment of donor DNA - that is, the genes of a third person. Therefore, with a certain stretch, we can say that the parents of the little Arab are not two, but three.

This genetic trick means that the child did not inherit from the mother a mutation that could have killed him at an early age. The boy's father and mother are citizens of Jordan. Well, the technology itself, which can cause an avalanche of disputes, is legally approved only in the UK.

However, the procedure was carried out by specialists from the United States in a territory where there are no laws at all according to which this experiment could be banned. American embryologists from the New Hope Medical Center (New York) hope that their success will turn on the green light for an unusual technique in various countries of the world, which will give hope to millions of genetically imperfect men and women to acquire normal, healthy offspring, that is, not to give birth children, obviously doomed to an early death.

For the first time in history, hereditary information from three people allowed a newly born little man to avoid a terrible disease. And now doctors know for sure that by reconstructing the mother's egg (and only in this way, and not otherwise), it is possible to ensure that the child is born healthy.

The boy's parents, whose names have not been released, have already lost two children due to a hereditary disease called Leigh's syndrome (subacute necrotizing encephalomyopathy). This is a very rare mutation leading to severe brain damage at a very early age. The first child of the tragic couple died at the age of six months after severe torment, the second - at the age of 8 months. Usually such children do not live up to 4 years, dying from pulmonary insufficiency.

The genes that cause Leigh's syndrome were found in the mother's mitochondrial DNA, which was determined by genetic analysis. It is worth noting that mitochondrial genes (and there are only 37 of them) are never inherited through the father.

Dejected by the loss of two offspring, the couple went to America in order to ask for help from the staff of the New Hope Center, which is engaged in innovations of this kind. Since American laws do not allow genetic manipulation of human mitochondrial DNA, parents and doctors went to Mexico. Doctors removed the nucleus from the cell and transplanted it into a nucleus-deprived donor egg, the mitochondria of which did not contain the genes that cause Leigh's syndrome. This egg was then fertilized in vitro with sperm from the child's father.

This procedure was repeated five times, and as a result, one of the eggs survived and began to divide. Thus a new life was born.

Doctors write that the possibilities of the tested technique are endless - in the matter of ridding human fetuses of hereditary defects. How far specialists will go in its use is still difficult to say. Still, there are risks and quite a lot of them. But the first step, as they say, is taken on quite solid ground.

The second case in world practice of the birth of a child with genetic material from three parents occurred in Ukraine. The 34-year-old mother had been treated for infertility for over 10 years and had 4 IVF procedures that did not help her. The reproductive specialists of the Kyiv clinic "Nadiya" ("Hope") were able to solve the patient's problem with the help of the latest technologies.

The technology of having a child from three parents, used in difficult situations when mothers suffer from mitochondrial diseases, was in the UK in 2015, but the first children who had two mothers appeared earlier - back in 1997. The technique of tripartite fertilization involves the transfer of the nuclei of a fertilized maternal egg to a fertilized donor egg, from where its own nuclei are removed before that. Thus, damaged mitochondria are not involved in the growth of the embryo, and it grows healthy. The donor embryo formally dies.

Despite the fact that the technology was approved in the UK, the world's first child of three parents was born in Mexico in the spring of 2016. Mexico was chosen because there is no need to obtain special permission for this kind of manipulation. Parents - a couple from Jordan - could not conceive a child for a long time, as the woman was diagnosed with Lee's syndrome. This disease prevented the conception and bearing of children. Since both the mother and father of the child were Muslims, scientists had to move away from the “classical” nuclear replacement scheme - they first transferred the nuclei to the desired egg, and only then fertilized it with the father’s sperm. About the birth of a healthy boy in September 2016.

In May of the same year, the specialists of the Nadia clinic announced that they had succeeded in replacing the cores using the technology approved in the UK. The head of the institution, Valery Zukin, specified that the patient, who became pregnant with the help of a donor egg, had problems at an early stage of embryo development. Doctors have been preparing for a transplant for about two years. During the procedure, they fertilized both eggs - the mother's and the donor's - with the father's sperm, then removed the nuclei from the donor egg and placed the nuclei from the fertilized mother's cell in their place. At that time, experts were afraid to make predictions, since it was necessary to wait for the birth of the child, and only then declare the success of the event.

Now it became known that the treatment helped the patient. In early January, she gave birth to a healthy child, who, according to Valery Zukin, has cytoplasmic DNA from a donor, and nuclear DNA from her biological father and mother. According to the results of the examination, the child is healthy. The birth of another baby, who will have three parents, is expected in March, his mother is now 29 years old. The director of the clinic noted that this can be considered the beginning of a new era - it will be possible not only to select embryos, but also to “finish” them.

About the birth of the world's first child "from three parents", who was born after a pronuclear transfer. This term means that the baby is a carrier of the DNA of three parents - the main one from the father and mother and the mitochondrial DNA from the female donor.

Previously, we recall that this kind of technique was used only to save children from hereditary diseases.

Baby, not quite conceived in the usual way, was born on January 5, 2017. His mother was a 34-year-old woman who suffered from infertility for 15 years and eventually, together with her husband, decided to take an important step. The director of the clinic and geneticist Valery Zukin announced this at a recent press conference.

Prior to this, a woman in many local and foreign clinics tried to get pregnant with IVF, but each time the procedure ended in failure. The reason for this, doctors called in this particular case the impossibility of developing embryos to the blastocyst stage (this is one of the early stages of embryo development).

That is why the use of donor eggs was the only way for this couple to have a baby. Let us explain that after fertilization, two cell nuclei (pronucleuses) are formed in the egg - from the mother and from the father. Reproductologists remove both of these nuclei from the mother's egg and transfer them to a donor egg, from which two nuclei are also removed before this (it is called enucleated).

In this way, scientists get a "reconstructed" zygote (that is, a fertilized egg), which in this case had a genetic set of about 25,000 genes from mom and dad, and another 37 genes from the donor. Therefore, this method is called the birth of "three parents." It avoids the development of genetic diseases in the newborn: "unnecessary" genes remain in the original egg, and the genetic material in the nuclei is transferred to the donor cell and remains intact.

When the baby was born, the researchers conducted many tests and confirmed the presence of genes from three people. This case was the first of its kind, but most likely will not be the only one: in March 2017, another baby is expected to be born, conceived in the same way.

Irina Sudoma, scientific director of the Nadezhda clinic, also noted that the new reproductive method is indicated to prevent mitochondrial diseases in a baby during normal conception, and also if, for some reason, the mother's eggs cannot develop normally into embryos in the early stages. “There are couples whose embryos have significant chromosomal damage, which are also caused by mitochondria. This method is also indicated for such patients,” she added.

Note that mitochondrial diseases are diagnosed in a child only after his birth. They can manifest themselves in severe mental disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders, some forms of cardiomyopathy, visual impairment. Often they lead to early death of a person.

The legislation of Ukraine does not yet regulate the norms for the use of such reproductive technologies, but the experiment was approved by the relevant ethical committees.

Recall that in September 2016 in Mexico, the first child was born who can be considered parents. True, for his conception, a technique was used that was somewhat different from the Ukrainian one.

In the meantime, the British authorities have a procedure for the birth of children with genetic material from three parents. In the United States, it was also allowed to create children from three parents, but.