Genome Analysis Unreliable for Looks

Jiji Press

13:19 JST, October 31, 2024

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — A Japanese team said Oct. 16 that technology to predict future physical traits, such as looks and height, and disease susceptibility based on genome analysis of in-vitro fertilized eggs is unreliable.

Overseas, there are cases in which embryos that earned the highest scores based on such predictions were implanted into the uterus as medical practices.

The practices pose an ethical problem, said the team, including researchers of Osaka University, the University of Tokyo and the government-backed research institute Riken.

The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology permits preimplantation genetic diagnosis for selecting embryos in fertility treatment only for the purpose of reducing the risk of miscarriage or avoiding the birth of a child with a serious genetic disease.

Even if genes in a fertilized egg related to physical traits and cancer, heart and mental diseases are examined, these are not considered predictable because the environment and lifestyle in which the child grows up have a significant impact.

Team member Shinichi Namba, assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, said that overseas, children have been born from embryos selected based on the results of such predictions.

The team ran computer simulations to predict height and type 2 diabetes risk using six major prediction methods.

“We’ve found problems with the reliability, such as an embryo that earned the best scores in one method was ranked at bottom in another,” Namba said.

For the simulations, the team used publicly available genome data from BioBank Japan. It randomly selected samples to virtually create 500 couples and analyzed 10 embryos for each couple.

Its paper was published in the British scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour.