In September 6 Nature, Sofia Berlin and Hans Ellegren from Uppsala University, Sweden, examine the controversial clonal inheritance theory for vertebrate mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) by following ...

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have discovered how mammalian cells prevent the gradual buildup of harmful mutations in mitochondrial DNA, the small but vital genome that powers every cell. The ...

An evolutionary trait of humans and most animals is that they inherit mitochondrial DNA exclusively from the mother, even though the father's spermatozoa have mitochondria. If spermatozoa have ...

Transferring the nuclear genome from one egg into the cytoplasm of a donor egg is a strategy to enable women carrying mutations in their mitochondrial DNA to have healthy babies. A new study uses ...

In most plants and animals, including humans, mitochondria are inherited exclusively, or nearly exclusively, from the mother. By contrast, paternal transmission is observed only occasionally, and the ...

Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center and the University of Oxford have found that a cellular housekeeping function called autophagy—by which cell components are broken down and recycled—plays a ...

In most eukaryotes, the inheritance of mitochondrion and its DNA (mtDNA) is strictly maternal, despite the fact that a spermatozoon can inject up to 100 functional mitochondria into the oocyte during ...