In vitro fertilization involves removing eggs from a woman, collecting sperm from a man, fertilizing the egg with the sperm, allowing the fertilized egg to form a blastocyst, and then transferring the blastocyst into the uterus. MRT involves an additional egg from a third person, and manipulation of both the recipient egg and the donor egg.
As of 2016 there were three MRT techniques in use: maternal spindle transfer (MST); pronuclear transfer (PNT); and the newest technique, polar body transfer (PBT). The original technique, in which mitochondria-containing cytoplasm taken from a donor egg is simply injected into the recipient egg, is no longer used.
In maternal spindle transfer, an oocyte is removed from the recipient, and when it is in the metaphase II stage of cell division, the spindle-chromosome complex is removed; some of the cytoplasm comes with it, so some mitochondria are likely to be included. The spindle-chromosome complex is inserted into a donor oocyte from which the nucleus has already been removed. This egg is fertilized with sperm and allowed to form a blastocyst, which can then be investigated with preimplantation genetic diagnosis to check for mitochondrial mutations, prior to being implanted in the recipient's uterus.
In pronuclear transfer, an oocyte is removed from the recipient and fertilized with sperm. The donor oocyte is fertilized with sperm from the same person. The male and female pronuclei are removed from each fertilized egg prior to their fusing, and the pronuclei from the recipients fertilized egg are inserted into the fertilized egg from the donor. As with MST, a small amount of cytoplasm from the recipient egg may be transferred, and as with MST, the fertilized egg is allowed to form a blastocyst, which can then be investigated with preimplantation genetic diagnosis to check for mitochondrial mutations before being implanted in the recipients uterus.
In polar body transfer, a polar body (a small cell with very little cytoplasm that is created when an egg cell divides) from the recipient is used in its entirety, instead of using nuclear material extracted from the recipients normal egg; this can be used in either MST or PNT. This technique was first published in 2014 and as of 2015 it had not been consistently replicated, but is considered promising as there is a greatly reduced chance for transmitting mitochondria from the recipient because polar bodies contain very few mitochondria, and it does not involve extracting material from the recipients egg.