Purifying selection during maternal inheritance of mammalian mtDNA depends on autophagy and bottleneck size.

Abstract excerpt

Mammalian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is transmitted asexually without recombination and accumulates mutations at a high rate, which eventually should cause a mutational meltdown. Two processes operating in the maternal germline, the genetic bottleneck and purifying selection, are counteracting this decline but the exact molecular mechanisms and their possible link remain incompletely understood. To address this,...

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• Autophagy
• DNA, Mitochondrial
• Mammals
• Maternal Inheritance
• Mice
• Mitochondria