ArticlePLoS biology2016
Selection for Mitochondrial Quality Drives Evolution of the Germline.
Article in PLoS biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Shifting the Balance: Mitochondrial Heteroplasmy as a Driver of Cardiac Disease.Circulation research · 2026Review
- Optimal Organelle Inheritance Strategies Under Different Changing Environments and Mutational Pressures.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Placental mitochondrial DNA mutation-related oxidative stress underlies subsequent risk of adverse prognosis in sFGR twins.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2026Article
- Gatekeepers of the Germ Line: How Mitochondria Shape Reproductive Evolution in Metazoans.Biology · 2025Review
- Evolution and maintenance of mtDNA gene content across eukaryotes.The Biochemical journal · 2024Review
- Selectively advantageous instability in biotic and pre-biotic systems and implications for evolution and aging.Frontiers in aging · 2024Review
- Cellular and environmental dynamics influence species-specific extents of organelle gene retention.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Mitonuclear Interactions and the Origin of Macaque Societies.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Editorial: Energy-producing organelles and the nucleus: a phenomenal genomic friendship.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Sorting of mitochondrial and plastid heteroplasmy inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Inheritance through the cytoplasm.Heredity · 2022Review
- Extreme intraspecific divergence in mitochondrial haplotypes makes the threespine stickleback fish an emerging evolutionary mutant model for mito-nuclear interactions.Frontiers in genetics · 2022Article
- Epigenetic Alterations under Oxidative Stress in Stem Cells.Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity · 2022Review
- Mitochondrial Contributions to Hematopoietic Stem Cell Aging.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- The need for high-quality oocyte mitochondria at extreme ploidy dictates mammalian germline development.eLife · 2021Article
- mtDNA Heteroplasmy: Origin, Detection, Significance, and Evolutionary Consequences.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Asymmetry, division of labour and the evolution of ageing in multicellular organisms.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Avoiding organelle mutational meltdown across eukaryotes with or without a germline bottleneck.PLoS biology · 2021Article
- A Naturally Heteroplasmic Clam Provides Clues about the Effects of Genetic Bottleneck on Paternal mtDNA.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The origin of the germline-soma distinction is a fundamental unsolved question. Plants and basal metazoans do not have a germline but generate gametes from pluripotent stem cells in somatic tissues (somatic gametogenesis). In contrast, most bilaterians sequester a dedicated germline early in development. We develop an evolutionary model which shows that selection for mitochondrial quality drives germline evolution. In organisms with low mitochondrial replication error rates, segregation of mutations over multiple cell divisions generates variation, allowing selection to optimize gamete quality through somatic gametogenesis. Higher mutation rates promote early germline sequestration. We also consider how oogamy (a large female gamete packed with mitochondria) alters selection on the germline. Oogamy is beneficial as it reduces mitochondrial segregation in early development, improving adult fitness by restricting variation between tissues. But it also limits variation between early-sequestered oocytes, undermining gamete quality. Oocyte variation is restored through proliferation of germline cells, producing more germ cells than strictly needed, explaining the random culling (atresia) of precursor cells in bilaterians. Unlike other models of germline evolution, selection for mitochondrial quality can explain the stability of somatic gametogenesis in plants and basal metazoans, the evolution of oogamy in all plants and animals with tissue differentiation, and the mutational forces driving early germline sequestration in active bilaterians. The origins of predation in motile bilaterians in the Cambrian explosion is likely to have increased rates of tissue turnover and mitochondrial replication errors, in turn driving germline evolution and the emergence of complex developmental processes.
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