How to make a baby with three parents?

How it’s possible for a baby to have three parents?

On Tuesday, Britain’s lower house of Parliament voted that it is righty-ho for a child to have three parents. In a free vote in the Commons, 382 MPs were in favour and 128 against the technique that stops genetic diseases being passed from mother to child.

Mitochondrial DNA transfer, which was developed by British scientists, allows IVF clinics to replace an egg’s defective mitochondrial DNA with healthy DNA from a female donor, to prevent children suffering debilitating conditions like muscular dystrophy.

The regulations would allow doctors to use DNA from two parents plus a healthy donor’s egg (without nuclear DNA) to create a healthy embryo, which would then be implanted into the mother’s uterus.  The IVF technique involves using healthy mitochondrial DNA from a donor to replace the defective DNA responsible for a host of debilitating inherited diseases.

The issue of three-parent babies has divided the scientific community and thrown up a host of ethical concerns.