Analysis of mtDNA variant segregation during early human embryonic development: a tool for successful NARP preimplantation diagnosis

摘要

BackgroundDiseases arising from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations are usually serious pleiotropic disorders with maternal inheritance. Owing to the high recurrence risk in the progeny of carrier females, “at‐risk” couples often ask for prenatal diagnosis. However, reliability of such practices remains under debate. Preimplantation diagnosis (PGD), a theoretical alternative to conventional prenatal diagnosis, requires that the mutant load measured in a single cell from an eight cell embryo accurately reflects the overall heteroplasmy of the whole embryo, but this is not known to be the case.