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by andyjohnson0 4738 days ago
"...why they don't extract the mitochondria from one of the fathers cells..."

I am not a biologist either, but...

As far as I know, the difficulty lies in removing the faulty mitochondria while keeping the health nucleus in-place and undamaged. Its easier to remove the nucleus from the egg.

Mitochondria removal has been done with fertilised monkey eggs and unfertilised human aggs [1][2]. The monkey eggs were implanted and produced apparently healthy animals. I guess the ethical problem with trying this with human embryos is the risk of unforseen effects.

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/dna-swap-technology-almost-ready-...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19710649