Mitochondrial homoplasmy signifies the existence of identical copies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and is essential for normal development, as heteroplasmy causes abnormal development and diseases in human. Homoplasmy in many organisms is ensured by maternal mtDNA inheritance through either absence of paternal mtDNA delivery or early elimination of paternal mtDNA. However, whether paternal mtDNA...

To determine whether pathogenic mutations in mtDNA are involved in phenotypic expression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the transfer of mtDNA from elderly patients with AD into mtDNA-less (rho0) HeLa cells was carried out by fusion of platelets or synaptosomal fractions of autopsied brain tissues with rho0 HeLa cells. The results showed that mtDNA in postmortem brain tissue survives for a long ti...

OBJECTIVE To determine the extent of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients compared to healthy subjects and to determine the factors associated with mtDNA damage among SLE patients. METHODS A cross-sectional study was performed in 86 SLE patients (per American College of Rheumatology classification criteria) and 86 healthy individuals matched for age ...

Mammalian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is inherited principally down the maternal line, but the mechanisms involved are not fully understood. Females harboring a mixture of mutant and wild-type mtDNA (heteroplasmy) transmit a varying proportion of mutant mtDNA to their offspring. In humans with mtDNA disorders, the proportion of mutated mtDNA inherited from the mother correlates with disease sever...

It is textbook knowledge that the small multicopy mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) is maternally inherited in humans and mammals [1,2]. The uniparental mtDNA inheritance applies to most eukaryotic organisms, including animals exhibiting the doubly uniparental inheritance, such as the bivalve mollusks [3,4]. Occurrence of paternal mtDNA transmission has also been documented [5–7], and doubts on stri...

The peculiar biology of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) potentially has detrimental consequences for organismal health and lifespan. Typically, eukaryotic cells contain multiple mitochondria, each with multiple mtDNA genomes. The high copy number of mtDNA implies that selection on mtDNA functionality is relaxed. Furthermore, because mtDNA replication is not strictly regulated, within-cell selection m...

Changes in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) content in cancers have been reported with controversial results, probably due to small sample size and variable pathological conditions. In this study, mtDNA content in 302 breast tumor/surrounding normal tissue pairs were evaluated and correlated with the clinico-pathological characteristics of tumors. Overall, mtDNA content in tumor tissues is significant...

In mammals, observations of rapid shifts in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variants between generations have led to the creation of the bottleneck theory for the transmission of mtDNA. The bottleneck could be attributed to a marked decline of mtDNA content in germ cells giving rise to the next generation, to a small effective number of mtDNA segregation units resulting from homoplasmic nucleoids rat...