Structure, transcription, and variability of metazoan mitochondrial genome: perspectives from an unusual mitochondrial inheritance system.

ABSTRACT: Despite its functional conservation, the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) presents strikingly different features among eukaryotes, such as size, rearrangements, and amount of intergenic regions. Nonadaptive processes such as random genetic drift and mutation rate play a fundamental role in shaping mtDNA: the mitochondrial bottleneck and the number of germ line replications are critical factors, and different patterns of germ line differentiation could be responsible for the mtDNA diversity observed in eukaryotes. Among metazoan, bivalve mollusc mtDNAs show unusual features, like hypervariable gene arrangements, high mutation rates, large amount of intergenic regions, and, in some species, an unique inheritance system, the doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI). The DUI system offers the possibil

SUBMITTER: Ghiselli F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3762199 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature