A slew of non-scientific articles have recently been published in response to some new research by Shiyu Luo et al. suggesting that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can actually be paternal in humans, which is contrary to the belief that mtDNA can only be passed onto new generations from mother to offspring. The non-scientific article and scientific article can be found in the links below.
Unfortunately, the actual research article can currently be accessed only through subscription, so it’s difficult to discuss the validity of this finding on a student budget. That being said, the information available claims that genome sequencing has allowed the research group to discover several unrelated family lines in humans that demonstrate paternal inheritance of mtDNA in a pattern that appears to be autosomal dominant. Shiyu Luo and his team are quick to point out that the mechanism of this pattern has yet to be found, however another study in 2017 found that, in your friend and mine the drosophila, mtDNA polymerases may play a role in ‘eliminating’ paternal mitochondrial genomes. This study can be found here:
It’s interesting food for thought, especially in light of the 3-parent embryo problem some of us had a chance to discuss earlier this year. As the first article I listed mentions, there is a clinical application to this research in that, if clinicians can disrupt the dogmatic preference for maternal DNA in human reproduction and instead supplant it with the paternal variant, we may have a route to avoid diseases that are linked through maternal mtDNA! Cool stuff.
Of course, we will have to wait and see if these findings are valid.
I also saw an article about this a few days back and as you mentioned, I also did not want to pay to see the scientific write up. I did notice that the article I read mentioned that this was only found in a select few families and thought to possibly be some sort of mutation that one of their ancestors ended up with many years ago. I wish I had access to the true paper but until then, like you, I will wait to see what comes of this topic. This could have drastic implications on how we look at mitochondrial disease inheritance.
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