Although defective respriration is not characteristic of all tumors, recent comparative studies on the ultrastructure of normal and tumor cell mitochondria indicate that in malignant cells mitochondria deviate from normal not only in relative abundance but also in the size, form, density, and frequency of appearance of lesions. Normal and abnormal mitochondria may populate the same cell, sugge...

15 Poulton J, Morten K, Brown G, Bindoff L. Are duplications of mitochondrial DNA characteristic of Kearns-Sayre syndrome? Human Molecular Genetics 1994; 3: 947-51. 16 Prezant TR, Agapian JV, Bohlman MC, et al. Mitochondrial ribosomal RNA mutation associated with both antibiotic-induced and non-syndromic deafness. Nature Genet 1993; 4: 289-94. 17 Fischel-Ghodsian N, Prezant TR, Bu X, Oztas S. M...

Pneumoviruses are responsible for significant respiratory disease in their hosts and represent a major problemfor human and animal health. Pneumoviruses are members of the family Paramyxoviridae, subfamilyPneumovirinae and the virus particles consist of a negative-sense, nonsegmented RNA genome within a helical nucleocapsid structure enveloped in a lipid membrane derived from the ho...

183 ABSTRACT: Mitochondrial diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders that can affect multiple organs with varying severity. Symptoms may be acute or chronic with intermittent decompensation. In childhood-onset disease, there is often a history of global developmental delay, while in adulthood the past history may be unremarkable prior to initial presentation. The unique character of mito...

The small, maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has turned out to be a hotbed of pathogenic mutations: 15 years into the era of 'mitochondrial medicine', over 150 pathogenic point mutations and countless rearrangements have been associated with a variety of multisystemic or tissue-specific human diseases. MtDNA-related disorders can be divided into two major groups: those due to mutat...

This paper presents the results of a single generation study of the transmission genetics of mitochondrial DNA in the field cricket Gryllus firmus. In this species, individuals heteroplasmic for at least two different-sized mitochondrial genomes can be collected easily from natural populations. The frequencies of mtDNA size variants in heteroplasmic females and samples of their offspring were e...

Mitochondria are eukaryotic organelle of endosymbiotic origin, specialized in the energy production, among many other various functions. One of the most remarkable features of mitochondrial proteins is that they are encoded by two genomes, located in different cellular compartments: the large majority of mitochondrial proteins being encoded by the nuclear genome, while the mitochondrial genome ...

The study of genetic disease is often centered on the human nuclear genome consisting of ~3.1 billion nucleotides and 25,000–30,000 genes located on the 23 pairs of chromosomes, whereas the mitochondrial genome has received less attention. Each cell contains numerous mitochondria and each mitochondrion contains several copies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Thus, a cell contains several thousand ...

Evolution of biological processes is fascinating and more so the evolutionary reduction of mitochondrial genome. A proteobacterium that invaded the nucleus-containing host cell 1.5 billion years ago, as would the endosymbiotic model surmises,1 ended up enslaved and yet became the essence of life of the invaded cell. And, if so, the invader could not have had a genome that was comprised of only ...

Mitochondria are double-membrane-bound organelles that are present in all nucleated eukaryotic cells and are responsible for the production of cellular energy in the form of ATP. Mitochondrial function is under dual genetic control - the 16.6-kb mitochondrial genome, with only 37 genes, and the nuclear genome, which encodes the remaining ∼1300 proteins of the mitoproteome. Mitochondrial dysfunc...