How does Parental Support work?
Parental Support overcomes many of the limitations typically associated with the testing of just a single cell. Because so little genetic material is available from a single cell, results on one blastomere from an embryo are inherently error-prone, even with the best testing and laboratory methods. Although new microarray testing technologies can analyze DNA from all 24 chromosomes using thousands of probes, these technologies require a greater volume of DNA than the amount retrieved from a single cell. DNA from a blastomere can be amplified (copied) to create a greater volume for testing; however, the quality of the amplified sample is poor, which increases the chance for testing errors. Parental Support compensates for the limitations of single cell amplification and testing by using DNA from both parents to enhance the results on each embryo. Many cells can be easily collected from the parents through a painless cheek swab, providing ample DNA for a full, accurate analysis on both p
