The complete arrangement of genes in the mitochondrial (mt) genome is known for 12 species of insects, and part of the gene arrangement in the mt genome is known for over 300 other species of insects. The arrangement of genes in the mt genome is very conserved in insects studied, since all of the protein-coding and rRNA genes and most of the tRNA genes are arranged in the same way. We sequenced...

It has been proposed that as a result of human adaptation to different climates, mitochondrial genes have been affected by natural selection. To further study the selective pressure on human mitochondrial DNA, we have analysed polymorphism at the gene, domain and nucleotide site level in four geographic regions. The ratio of non-synonymous relative to synonymous substitutions is elevated for AT...

Empirical observation shows that practically encountered instances of ATP6 are efficiently solvable. However, it has been known for more than two decades that ATPG is an NP-complete problem. This work is one of the first attempts to reconcile these seemingly disparate results. We introduce the concept of circuit cut-width and characterize the complexity of ATPG in terms of this property. We pro...

The yeast Oxa1 protein is involved in the biogenesis of the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) machinery. The involvement of Oxa1 in the assembly of the cytochrome oxidase (COX) complex, where it facilitates the cotranslational membrane insertion of mitochondrially encoded COX subunits, is well documented. In this study we have addressed the role of Oxa1, and its sequence-related ...

Maternally inherited mutations, such as cytoplasmic male sterility, provide useful systems in which to study the function of plant mitochondrial genomes and also their interaction with nuclear genes. We have studied the organization and expression of the organelle genomes of the male-sterile cytoplasm of Ogura radish and compared them with those of normal radish to identify alterations that mig...

Transcripts encoding ATP synthase subunit 6 (ATP6) in petunia mitochondria were shown to be edited at 15 sites, leading to 14 amino acid changes. Certain sites are partially edited, including a site that introduces a new translation termination codon that is 13 codons upstream of the genomically encoded stop codon. Transcripts lacking the new stop codon are present in an ~ 2 5 1 ratio to transc...

Mutations in the human mitochondrial ATP6 gene encoding ATP synthase subunit a/6 (referred to as Atp6p in yeast) are at the base of neurodegenerative disorders like Neurogenic Ataxia and Retinitis Pigmentosa (NARP), Leigh syndrome (LS), Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), and ataxia telangiectasia. In previous studies, using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model we were able to better define how...

Cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) systems represent ideal mutants to study the role of mitochondria in pollen development. In sunflower, CMS PET2 also has the potential to become an alternative CMS source for commercial sunflower hybrid breeding. CMS PET2 originates from an interspecific cross of H. petiolaris and H. annuus as CMS PET1, but results in a different CMS mechanism. Southern analyses...