Monkeys born from eggs receiving DNA transplant

An experimental procedure that someday may enable women to avoid passing certain genetic diseases on to their children has gained an early success with the birth of four healthy monkeys, scientists report.

The technique still faces safety questions and perhaps ethical hurdles, but an expert called the work exciting.

The experiment, which involved transferring DNA between eggs from rhesus macaques, was described Wednesday on the Web site of the journal Nature by researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University.

Someday, the technique may be used against diseases caused by inherited defects in the “power plants” of cells, called mitochondria. These conditions are uncommon and unfamiliar to most people, such as Leber hereditary optic neuropathy. Roughly one person in every 4,000 or 5,000 either has one of these mitochondrial diseases or is at risk for one.

Douglas Wallace of the University of California, Irvine, an authority on mitochondria who wasn’t involved in the federally funded experiment, said the results were exciting and the technique is “potentially very interesting.”

But “there are safety issues that are going to need to be addressed before one could think about it in humans,” Wallace said.