The inheritance of viable mitochondria
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Developmental Biology, Evolutionary Studies
- Keywords
- Mitochondria, Mitochondrial activity, Mitochondrial inheritance, Gametes, Reactive Oxygen Species, Mitochondrial bottleneck, Germ line, Mitochondrial membrane potential, mtDNA polymorphism, Heteroplasmy
- Copyright
- © 2017 Milani et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. The inheritance of viable mitochondria. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3122v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3122v1
Abstract
Mitochondria cannot be produced de novo by the cell, but are inherited across generations. Their peculiar genetics (multiple genomes per cell, no meiosis, replication independent from cell cycle, high mutation rate) and the possible exposition to Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) are predicted to produce a fast accumulation of deleterious mutations, a phenomenon known as Müller’s ratchet. Nonetheless, mitochondrial genomes persist accurately over million years. How is a viable mitochondrial genetic information preserved? To answer this question we review the following relevant topics: 1) the sources of mtDNA mutation (replication and ROS); 2) the origin of mitochondrial membrane potential; 3) the activity of germ line mitochondria; 4) the mitochondrial bottleneck; 5) mtDNA drift and selection. Finally we discuss such topics in the light of an unusual biological system (Doubly Uniparental Inheritance of mitochondria, DUI), in which also sperm mtDNA is regularly transmitted to the progeny.
Author Comment
Poster presentation for the Open Symposium of SMBE 2017