Mitochondrial mutations: When the cell's 2 genomes collide
Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - 19:30
in Biology & Nature
Mitochondria (bright areas) are visible in these stained fruit fly ovary cells. Diseases from a mutation in one genome are complicated enough, but some illnesses arise from errant interactions between two genomes: the DNA in the nucleus and in the mitochondria. Scientists want to know more about how such genomic disconnects cause disease. In a step in that direction, scientists at Brown University and Indiana University have traced one such incompatibility in fruit flies down to the level of individual nucleotide mutations and describe how the genetic double whammy makes the flies sick.