[Nucleotide mapping and a kinetic model of a heteroplasmic deletion of 4,666 base pairs from mitochondrial DNA in the Kearns-Sayre syndrome].

We report the nucleotidic mapping of a 4,666 base pairs deletion of the human mitochondrial DNA localized at positions 8571 and 13237 in a Kearns-Sayre syndrome patient. The gene fusion between the 15 N terminal amino acid residues of ATP synthetase subunit 6 and the 303 C terminal aminoacids of NADH dehydrogenase yields a potential protein of 35,000 d MW called A6-ND5. Deletion boundaries show a short inverted repeat ATCXTA. The heteroplasmic deletion mechanism is discussed in view of these data.