Wallace Douglas C, Chalkia Dimitra
Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104.
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2013 Nov 1;5(11):a021220. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a021220.
The unorthodox genetics of the mtDNA is providing new perspectives on the etiology of the common "complex" diseases. The maternally inherited mtDNA codes for essential energy genes, is present in thousands of copies per cell, and has a very high mutation rate. New mtDNA mutations arise among thousands of other mtDNAs. The mechanisms by which these "heteroplasmic" mtDNA mutations come to predominate in the female germline and somatic tissues is poorly understood, but essential for understanding the clinical variability of a range of diseases. Maternal inheritance and heteroplasmy also pose major challengers for the diagnosis and prevention of mtDNA disease.
线粒体DNA(mtDNA)非传统的遗传学正在为常见“复杂”疾病的病因提供新的视角。母系遗传的mtDNA编码必需的能量基因,每个细胞中存在数千个拷贝,并且具有非常高的突变率。新的mtDNA突变出现在数千个其他mtDNA之中。这些“异质性”mtDNA突变在女性生殖系和体细胞组织中占主导地位的机制尚不清楚,但对于理解一系列疾病的临床变异性至关重要。母系遗传和异质性也给mtDNA疾病的诊断和预防带来了重大挑战。