Hello mothers, hello father A technique intended to eliminate
mitochondrial diseases would result in people with three genetic
parents IS IT possible for a child to have three parents? That
is the question raised by a paper just published in Nature by
Shoukhrat Mitalipov and his colleagues at Oregon Health and
Science University. And the answer seems to be “yes”, for this
study paves the way for the birth of children who, genetically,
have one father, but two mothers. The reason this is possible is
that a mother’s genetic contribution to her offspring comes in
two separable pieces. By far the largest is packed into the 23
chromosomes in the nucleus of an unfertilised egg. In that, she
is just like the child’s father, who provides another 23 through
his sperm. But the mother also contributes what is known as
mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are a cell’s power-packs. They
convert the energy in sugar into a form usable by the cell’s
molecular machinery. And because mitochondria descend from a
bacterium that, abou