Concerns with Mitochondrial Replacement

This genetic modification was inherited not only to children but also to descendants (Bredenoord, Pennings and Wert 670). Since healthy donor mtDNA grows in their cells, techniques such as PNT and MST allow children to make normal cell energy production at birth. As a result of this intervention, the resulting child's sperm cells or egg cells ("germline") are also developed using donor mitochondria (Nuffield Council on Bioethics 57). Another problem with mitochondrial substitutes is the potential short-term and long-term harm to the future children's health and well-being, germline intervention to them and their descendants.

With a new technique called mitochondrial replacement technology (MRT), mothers suffer from mitochondrial disease (maternally infected) and can produce genetically similar descendants without these diseases. This is because scientists take out nuclear DNA from maternal egg cells and convert them (or transplant them) into healthy mitochondria into unfertilized egg cells (9). Recently, Cambridge biologists were able to completely produce artificial mouse embryos from stem cells. Currently, this artificial embryo does not actually have a scientific function, it has developed into the science of adult mouse, but it provides a template of how to make a sperm embryo or an egg cell embryo (10). This is huge in the LGBTQ + community, and we can only produce children with one sex cell. When combined with MRT, descendants become genetically related to parents without donors and surrogacy eggs.

In many organisms, the mitochondrial genome is maternally inherited. This is because the mother's egg cells provide most of the cytoplasm to the embryo and the mitochondria inherited from the sperm of the father is usually destroyed. There are many hereditary and acquired mitochondrial diseases. Hereditary diseases may be caused by maternal or paternal nuclear DNA, or maternal mtDNA mutations. Both genetic and acquired mitochondrial dysfunction are involved in various diseases including Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. The accumulation of life-long mtDNA mutations in organisms is suspected to play an important role in aging and the development of certain cancers and other diseases.