The regulations for techniques to create three- and four-parent babies were published in late 2014, with MPs and Peers due to vote early in 2015 on allowing the two procedures, Maternal Spindle Transfer (MST) and Pro-Nuclear Transfer (PNT).
MST involves replacing the nucleus in a healthy donor egg with the nuclear DNA from the prospective mother – resulting in a child with DNA from three parents. PNT creates a child from four different individuals: a chromosomal mother, a chromosomal father, an egg mother and a sperm father.
If legalised, the UK would become the only country in the world to permit the two techniques.
