ReviewBioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology2015
Why are most organelle genomes transmitted maternally?
Review in BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 157 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
157 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Systematic Review and Developmental Perspective on Origin of CMS Genes in Crops.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Inheritance and selection of the mitochondrial genome.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Review
- Monitoring the fate of paternal mitochondria and their elimination in rice zygotes.Plant physiology · 2026Article
- Instance of a Heteroplasmic Mitogenome in Alvinocaridid ShrimpEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Optimal Organelle Inheritance Strategies Under Different Changing Environments and Mutational Pressures.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Causes and consequences of cytonuclear incompatibility in hybrids of flowering plants.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Review
- Assembly and comparison of organelle genomes for investigating the maternal inheritance in Peganum (Nitrariaceae).BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Comparative chloroplast genomics of 22 species of Sida (Malvaceae) reveals structural conservation, adaptive evolution, and preliminary phylogenetic structure.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- Complex History of Organellar Introgression inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Organelle genome evolution in the early-diverging brown algal lineage, Ishigeales.Journal of phycology · 2026Article
- Plastome evolution in annual Brachypodium species reveals widespread heteroplasmy and chloroplast capture, lineage-specific codon usage bias, and low positive selection.BMC plant biology · 2026Article
- High-frequency biparental inheritance of plant mitochondria upon chilling stress and loss of a genome-degrading nuclease.Nature plants · 2026Article
- Origin of subgenomes in the circumboreal, allopolyploid, carnivorous plant Drosera anglica.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- Ongoing structural changes highlight the dynamic nature of chloroplast genomes.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- First Plastome Sequences of Two Endemic Taxa ofBiology · 2026Article
- Super-barcoding of four Agrimonia species distributed in Korea based on complete plastid genomes and nuclear ribosomal DNAs.PloS one · 2026Article
- Albinism in Cereal Androgenesis-Shedding Light on Molecular Mechanisms and Possible Solutions.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Review
- The first complete chloroplast genome and phylogenetic analysis ofMitochondrial DNA. Part B, Resources · 2026Article
- Comparative analysis the complete chloroplast genomes in wild Musa species of India for its phylogenetic and taxonomic implications.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
97 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Why the DNA-containing organelles, chloroplasts, and mitochondria, are inherited maternally is a long standing and unsolved question. However, recent years have seen a paradigm shift, in that the absoluteness of uniparental inheritance is increasingly questioned. Here, we review the field and propose a unifying model for organelle inheritance. We argue that the predominance of the maternal mode is a result of higher mutational load in the paternal gamete. Uniparental inheritance evolved from relaxed organelle inheritance patterns because it avoids the spread of selfish cytoplasmic elements. However, on evolutionary timescales, uniparentally inherited organelles are susceptible to mutational meltdown (Muller's ratchet). To prevent this, fall-back to relaxed inheritance patterns occurs, allowing low levels of sexual organelle recombination. Since sexual organelle recombination is insufficient to mitigate the effects of selfish cytoplasmic elements, various mechanisms for uniparental inheritance then evolve again independently. Organelle inheritance must therefore be seen as an evolutionary unstable trait, with a strong general bias to the uniparental, maternal, mode.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.