ArticlePLoS biology2021
Avoiding organelle mutational meltdown across eukaryotes with or without a germline bottleneck.
Article in PLoS biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Coevolution of Codependent Hosts and Symbionts.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Optimal Organelle Inheritance Strategies Under Different Changing Environments and Mutational Pressures.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- The Use of dN/dS Ratios to Investigate Types of Selection in Related Sexual and Asexual Lineages.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Review
- Sensitivity of genome-wide tests for mitonuclear genetic incompatibilities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Estimating physical conditions supporting gradients of ATP concentration in the eukaryotic cell.Biophysical journal · 2026Article
- Inheritance bias of deletion-harbouring mtDNA in yeast: The role of copy number and intracellular selection.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Cytoplasmic inheritance: The transmission of plastid and mitochondrial genomes across cells and generations.Plant physiology · 2025Review
- Stronger Evidence for Relaxed Selection Than Adaptive Evolution in High-elevation Animal mtDNA.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Aging through the lens of mitochondrial DNA mutations and inheritance paradoxes.Biogerontology · 2024Review
- Evolution and maintenance of mtDNA gene content across eukaryotes.The Biochemical journal · 2024Review
- Ecological Predictors of Organelle Genome Evolution: Phylogenetic Correlations with Taxonomically Broad, Sparse, Unsystematized Data.Systematic biology · 2024Article
- Heteroplasmy Is Rare in Plant Mitochondria Compared with Plastids despite Similar Mutation Rates.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Connecting Species-Specific Extents of Genome Reduction in Mitochondria and Plastids.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Stronger evidence for relaxed selection than adaptive evolution in high-elevation animal mtDNA.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Stochastic organelle genome segregation through Arabidopsis development and reproduction.The New phytologist · 2024Article
- A chromosome-scale genome assembly and evaluation of mtDNA variation in the willow leaf beetle Chrysomela aeneicollis.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Article
- Mutation pressure, drift, and the pace of molecular coevolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Analysis of MT-ATP8 gene variants reported in patients by modeling in silico and in yeast model organism.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Avoiding misleading estimates using mtDNA heteroplasmy statistics to study bottleneck size and selection.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Article
- Cellular and environmental dynamics influence species-specific extents of organelle gene retention.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and plastid DNA (ptDNA) encode vital bioenergetic apparatus, and mutations in these organelle DNA (oDNA) molecules can be devastating. In the germline of several animals, a genetic "bottleneck" increases cell-to-cell variance in mtDNA heteroplasmy, allowing purifying selection to act to maintain low proportions of mutant mtDNA. However, most eukaryotes do not sequester a germline early in development, and even the animal bottleneck remains poorly understood. How then do eukaryotic organelles avoid Muller's ratchet-the gradual buildup of deleterious oDNA mutations? Here, we construct a comprehensive and predictive genetic model, quantitatively describing how different mechanisms segregate and decrease oDNA damage across eukaryotes. We apply this comprehensive theory to characterise the animal bottleneck with recent single-cell observations in diverse mouse models. Further, we show that gene conversion is a particularly powerful mechanism to increase beneficial cell-to-cell variance without depleting oDNA copy number, explaining the benefit of observed oDNA recombination in diverse organisms which do not sequester animal-like germlines (for example, sponges, corals, fungi, and plants). Genomic, transcriptomic, and structural datasets across eukaryotes support this mechanism for generating beneficial variance without a germline bottleneck. This framework explains puzzling oDNA differences across taxa, suggesting how Muller's ratchet is avoided in different eukaryotes.
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