News that the UK Government is supporting IVF technology that involves embryos receiving DNA from 3 parents is very welcome (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jun/28/uk-government-ivf-dna-three-people). The procedure would be used to eliminate mitochondrial disease (mitochondria are the 'powerhouses' of all our cells, enabling us to breakdown glucose, in respiration, to generate energy fuelling living processes), a condition that is often fatal in childhood. The mitochondria have their own DNA and babies only receive this from their mothers (the egg is much bigger than the sperm). The technologies would involve either placing the mother's nucleus in a donor egg with healthy mitochondria before fertilisation or placing the 2 parent's fertilisation product into the donor egg. There is, of course, an ethical debate about the use of these techniques but there has been little reference to the so-called 'endosymbiosis hypothesis'. One idea suggests that the sausage-shaped mitochondria with their polo-mint like DNA are actually bacteria that have chosen to live inside the cells of animals and plants. In this symbiotic relationship, the bacterium gains a stable environment with plentiful glucose and the host organism gains a much more efficient means of generating energy (ATP) to power life processes. If this is true, the 0.2% of DNA in the mitochondria is not really part of the human genome anyhow!
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