Exclusion of paternal mitochondria in fertilized mammalian eggs is very stringent and ensures strictly maternal mtDNA inheritance. In this study, to examine whether elimination was specific to sperm mitochondria, we microinjected spermatid or liver mitochondria into mouse embryos. Congenic B6-mt(spr) strain mice, which are different from C57BL/6J (B6) strain mice (Mus musculus domesticus) only ...

The mitochondrial theory of aging proposes that reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated inside the cell will lead, with time, to increasing amounts of oxidative damage to various cell components. The main site for ROS production is the respiratory chain inside the mitochondria and accumulation of mtDNA mutations, and impaired respiratory chain function have been associated with degenerative dis...

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are associated with a broad spectrum of clinical disorders. The segregation pattern of pathogenic mtDNAs is an important determinant of both the onset and the severity of the disease phenotype, but the mechanisms controlling mtDNA segregation remain poorly understood. To investigate this, we previously generated heteroplasmic mice containing two different ...

Chronic inflammation is highly prevalent in maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients, and it has been shown to be a strong predictor of morbidity and mortality. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) released into circulation after cell damage can promote inflammation in patients and animal models. However, the role and mechanisms of circulatory mtDNA in chronic inflammation in MHD patients remain unknown. S...

Activation of the Mec1/Rad53 damage checkpoint pathway influences mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) content and point mutagenesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The effects of this conserved checkpoint pathway on mitochondrial genomes in human cells remain largely unknown. Here, we report that knockdown of the human DNA helicase RRM3 enhances phosphorylation of the cell cycle arrest kinase Chk2, indicati...

The involvement of heritable modifications of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in chemical carcinogenesis was examined by studies on the effects on tumorigenicity of interchange of mtDNA between 3-methylcholanthrene (MCA)-induced mouse tumor cells and nontumorigenic mouse cells by the cytoplast-to-cell fusion technique. The difference in propagating abilities of two types of mouse mtDNA, type 1 mtDNA ...

The introduction of nuclear transfer (NT) and other technologies that involve embryo reconstruction require us to reinvestigate patterns of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) transmission, transcription and replication. MtDNA is a 16.6 kb genome located within each mitochondrion. The number of mitochondria and mtDNA copies per organelle is specific to each cell type. MtDNA is normally transmitted throug...

The epigenetic modification of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is still in controversy. To clarify this point, we applied the gold standard method for DNA methylation, bisulfite pyrosequencing, to examine human mtDNA methylation status. Before bisulfite conversion, BamHI was used to digest DNA to open the loop of mtDNA. The results demonstrated that the linear mtDNA had significantly higher bisulfite...

Adult human heart mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has recently been shown to have a complex organization with abundant dimeric molecules, branched structures and four-way junctions. In order to understand the physiological significance of the heart-specific mtDNA maintenance mode and to find conditions that modify human heart mtDNA structure and replication, we analyzed healthy human heart of various...

BACKGROUND Cumulative evidence has shown that low mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) content is related to elevated oxidative stress and atherosclerosis, which play important roles in ischemic stroke. The objective of this study was to explore the association between mtDNA content in peripheral blood leukocytes and ischemic stroke. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 350 patients with first-ever ischemic s...