Author: Science News Staff / Source: Science News
Scientists have long thought that children inherit mitochondria — tiny energy factories found in cells — from only their mothers. But data from three unrelated families suggest that in rare cases children can also inherit mitochondria from their fathers, Tina Hesman Saey reported in “Dads, not just moms, can pass along mitochondrial DNA” (SN: 1/19/19, p. 8).
Online reader John Turner had a lot of questions about dad-derived mitochondria.
“What factors allow paternal mitochondria to enter the egg?” he asked. “How many human conceptions include paternal mitochondria in the general population? Does the ratio of paternal/maternal mitochondria vary in particular tissues?”
In most cases, paternal mitochondria enter the egg at conception but are usually tagged for destruction and removed, Saey says. “As to how many paternal mitochondria escape that death sentence, there’s really no way to know without thoroughly examining a large number of people’s DNA with a technique called deep sequencing,” she says. “The first person discovered to have paternal mitochondria carried them only in his muscle cells.
Detecting dad’s mitochondria in other tissues may require more than a blood or spit test.” The researchers think this phenomenon is probably rare. Mothers are still the parents who pass along the majority of mitochondria.Online reader stargene wondered what implications the finding might have for the human molecular clock, which traces human evolution via changes in mitochondrial DNA.
“This shouldn’t radically affect a human’s mitochondrial…
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