Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
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Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#2This has been known for a long time. It's a myth that mtDNA only comes from the mother and was based on a misreading of an old paper decades ago. I don't know why the myth has so much traction among geneticists who should know better. Many claims have been made deriving from these assumptions. Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is passed, and any differences are mutations, is completely off. All that research is and always has been invalid.
1996 paper on paternal mtDNA inheritance: http://www.pnas.org/content/93/24/13859.full
2002 paper on paternal mtDNA inheritance: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2716-mitochondria-can...
Wikipedia's been updating this article since 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_mtDNA_transmission
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#3In the age of low-cost DNA sequencing, shouldn't this be simple to figure out?
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#4Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#5This has been known for a long time. It's a myth that mtDNA only comes from the mother and was based on a misreading of an old paper decades ago. I don't know why the myth has so much traction among geneticists who should know better. Many claims have been made deriving from these assumptions. Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is…
> Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is passed, and any differences are mutations, is completely off. All that research is and always has been invalid.
This is a drastic and totally implausible statement that is not supported by any serious geneticist, nor by the Wikipedia article you've linked to.
mtDNA does not have to come exclusively, 100%, no-exceptions-ever from the mother, in order for population research which uses to be valid! 99% is quite sufficient. It is at least 99.9% accurate: as the Wikipedia article helpfully points out, there are 1000x as many mitochondria in an egg as in a sperm.
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#6This has been known for a long time. It's a myth that mtDNA only comes from the mother and was based on a misreading of an old paper decades ago. I don't know why the myth has so much traction among geneticists who should know better. Many claims have been made deriving from these assumptions. Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is…
How do you know paternal mitochondrial dna transmission isn’t so rare that it has no real measurable effect on population mapping?
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#7This has been known for a long time. It's a myth that mtDNA only comes from the mother and was based on a misreading of an old paper decades ago. I don't know why the myth has so much traction among geneticists who should know better. Many claims have been made deriving from these assumptions. Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is…
> Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is passed, and any differences are mutations, is completely off. All that research is and always has been invalid. This is a drastic and totally implausible statement that is not supported by any serious geneticist, nor by the Wikipedia article you've linked to. mtDNA does not have to come exclu…
You're attacking a strawman.
mtDNA can be used to track lineages. It's the dating of when branches occurred that is off because it assumes all differences are due to mutations and not paternal contributions.
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#8This has been known for a long time. It's a myth that mtDNA only comes from the mother and was based on a misreading of an old paper decades ago. I don't know why the myth has so much traction among geneticists who should know better. Many claims have been made deriving from these assumptions. Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is…
How do you know paternal mitochondrial dna transmission isn’t so rare that it has no real measurable effect on population mapping?
In humans between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 10,000 of the mtDNA is copied from the father, and how much and which parts seems to depend a lot on the particular father, perhaps suggesting that there exists an as yet undiscovered checksum scheme, and not random chance. Most mtDNA between humans is the same, and mtDNA is only 16,569 base pairs long. So in most offspring the paternal mtDNA contribution of 1-20 base pairs happens to be the same as the maternal mtDNA and one can not distinguish that it is even present. But sometimes those 1-20 base pairs are different. The fallacious assumption that all changes in mtDNA are due to mutations in the mother is completely off. The differences between mother and child are almost always due to the father's contribution, and not to mutations. This has serious consequences for branch dating based on mutation rates.
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is passed, and any differences are mutations, is completely off. All that research is and always has been invalid. This is a drastic and totally implausible statement that is not supported by any serious geneticist, nor by the Wikipedia article you've linked to. mtDNA does not have to come exclu…
You're attacking a strawman. mtDNA can be used to track lineages. It's the dating of when branches occurred that is off because it assumes all differences are due to mutations and not paternal contributions.
That's a good insight - it's not whether or not the rate of paternal inheritance is high, it's whether or not the rate of paternal inheritance is high relative to the rate of mutation. What are those rates for mDNA?
Re: Mitochondrial DNA can come from both parents
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nearly all research purporting to date past branches of populations based on mtDNA mutations by assuming a maternal clone is passed, and any differences are mutations, is completely off. All that research is and always has been invalid. This is a drastic and totally implausible statement that is not supported by any serious geneticist, nor by the Wikipedia article you've linked to. mtDNA does not have to come exclu…
You're attacking a strawman. mtDNA can be used to track lineages. It's the dating of when branches occurred that is off because it assumes all differences are due to mutations and not paternal contributions.
I am not.
The rate of mutation is already not a constant, and so such dating is always approximate, there is a margin of error.
If you wish to demonstrate that it is now "completely off" and "invalid", try harder. I call shenanigans.