A major earthquake has damaged a hospital and all records were lost. One infant

Question

A major earthquake has damaged a hospital and all records were lost. One infant was rescued and two different sets of relatives (aunts, uncles, and grandparents) are both claiming this child is their relative. Both families are certain their family’s child was conceived by artificial insemination, but in both cases the parents were lost. One family knows that their child had three biological parents (and they know the mitochondrial donor).

a. What test or tests would you propose be done to identify the family the infant belongs to?

b. What results would your test give be convincing evidence of the family the child belongs to?

Explanation / Answer

involves taking the nucleus of one egg and inserting it into the cytoplasm of another egg which has had its nucleus removed, but still contains mitochondrial DNA, and then fertilizing the hybrid egg with a sperm. donor egg usually comes from a non-maternal relative. For a child having undergone this procedure to have only two identifiable genetic parents, the donor egg must have come from a maternal relative (this is because mitochondrial DNA mtDNA is inherited maternally; thus maternal relatives will have identical mitochondrial DNA, barring random mutations). Maternal relative egg donation is not commonly used, because if the female egg has a mitochondrial disease then it is highly likely that the maternal relatives inherited the disease as well.. a.test done= relatives those who are female has to be tested for their mitochondrial dna,as that dna has been inherited to the ofspring.mtdna pcr can be done and then rflp to match the sequence similarity between the infant and female relatives.b. 3 parents, fathers sperm,mother nuclear dna,relative mtdna, so some phenotypic similarity will be their inbetween the parents and ofspring orbehavorial which will convince the parents,chances of similarity higher in mtdna

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