Mitochondrial DNA Bottleneck (IMAGE)
Caption
The study identified a drastic bottleneck, in which only seven to ten of the mother's thousands of copies of mitochondrial DNA get passed on to each child. Because of the timing of the bottleneck, different copies may be passed to different children, and copies with disease-causing mutations (blue) could be passed on to only some children. A process called natural selection helps purge the precursors of egg cells with too many disease-causing copies. Children born to older mothers have more copies of mitochondrial DNA with mutations, which may have important implications for genetic counseling of women planning pregnancies.
Credit
Arslan Zaidi and Kateryna Makova, Penn State
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