Background Oocyte maturity includes nuclear and cytoplasmic maturity, both of which are important for embryo fertilization. The development of oocyte is not limited to the period of follicular growth, and starts from the embryonic period and continues throughout life. In this study, for the purpose of evaluating the effect of the FSH hormone on the expression of genes, GEO access codes for this...

The mitochondrial gene for COXII is typically encoded in the organelle genome, however in some members of two unrelated groups, Apicomplexa and Chlorophyceae, cox2 is split into two genes, and both are encoded in the nucleus. Rare genomic changes (RGCs) have acquired popularity as phylogenetic markers, and accordingly this rearrangement of cox2 has been used to infer a possible source of the ap...

C ellular mitochondria play important roles in the production of energy required by human cells, thermogenesis, calcium and iron homeostasis, innate immune responses, production of reactive oxygen species, and programmed cell death (apoptosis). Approximately 1000 nuclear genes encoding mitochondrial proteins have been identified to date. A mutation in any of these genes has the potential to giv...

The phylogenetic positions of bryophytes and charophytes, together with their genome features, are important for understanding early land plant evolution. Here we report the complete nucleotide sequence (105,340 bp) of the circular-mapping mitochondrial DNA of the moss Physcomitrella patens. Available evidence suggests that the multipartite structure of the mitochondrial genome in flowering pla...

We have used analysis of variance to partition the variation in synonymous and amino acid substitution rates between three effects (gene, lineage, and a gene-by-lineage interaction) in mammalian nuclear and mitochondrial genes. We find that gene effects are stronger for amino acid substitution rates than for synonymous substitution rates and that lineage effects are stronger for synonymous subs...

Weighting strategies in a total evidence approach are often conducted in order to remove homoplasy, with the implicit hope to increase congruence between data partitions. Incongruence was measured using the test of Farris et al. (J. S. Farris, M. Källersjö, A. G. Kluge, and C. Bult, 1995, Cladistics 10, 315-319) within and between three mitochondrial genes from pitvipers (Crotalinae) in partiti...

Mitochondria contain several large multisubunit enzyme complexes that are composed of proteins encoded in the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. Particularly for correct assembly of these enzyme complexes, expression of the respective mitochondrial and nuclear genes has to be coordinated to ensure correct stoichiometries of the protein subunits. Part of this control and the response to specific...

Cytoplasmic effects on plant performance are well-documented and result from the intimate interaction between organellar and nuclear gene products. In plants, deletions, mutations, or chimerism of mitochondrial genes are often associated with deleterious phenotypes, as well as economically important traits such as cytoplasmic male sterility used to produce hybrid seed. Presently, genetic analys...

Mitochondrial disorders have become the most common cause of inborn errors of metabolism. Impairments in mitochondrial protein synthesis are one of the causes of these diseases, which are clinically and genetically heterogeneous. The mitochondrial translation machinery decodes 13 polypeptides essential for the oxidative phosphorylation process. Mitochondria protein synthesis depends on the inte...

DNA topoisomerases contribute to various cellular activities that involve DNA. We previously identified a human nuclear gene that encodes a mitochondrial DNA topoisomerase. Here we show that genes for mitochondrial DNA topoisomerases (type IB) exist only in vertebrates. A 13-exon topoisomerase motif was identified as a characteristic of genes for both nuclear and mitochondrial type IB topoisome...