Questão 2348949

Text II

“The mitomum supplies the child’s mitochondria. (1) are tiny structures, present in most cells, that liberate usable energy from food and oxygen. People (2) defective mitochondria suffer debilitating illness and often die young because the tissues of their bodies are starved of the energy they need to work. Mitochondrial diseases (3) hereditary, and at the moment incurable. Mitochondrial donation is designed to prevent them by replacing faulty mitochondria with healthy ones.

But mitochondria are, or used to be, creatures in their own right. They are the descendants of ancient bacteria that once lived free, but then entered into a symbiotic union with other cells. As such they have their own tiny genomes, separate from the main genome in the host cell’s nucleus. A baby born through mitochondrial donation would thus inherit maternal nuclear DNA, paternal nuclear DNA and a helping of mitochondrial DNA from the mitomum.”

(The economist)

In the first paragraph, line 4 “mitochondria suffer debilitating illness and often die young”. The plural form of the word illness is: