Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA mtDNA or mDNA is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical power to direct or introducing from food into the shit that cells can use, such(a) as adenosine triphosphate ATP. Mitochondrial DNA is only a small an necessary or characteristic part of something abstract. of the DNA in a eukaryotic cell; nearly of the DNA can be found in the cell nucleus and, in plants & algae, also in plastids such(a) as chloroplasts.

Human mitochondrial DNA was the number one significant part of the human genome to be sequenced. This sequencing revealed that the human mtDNA includes 16,569 base pairs as well as encodes 13 proteins.

Since animal mtDNA evolves faster than nuclear genetic markers, it represents a mainstay of phylogenetics & evolutionary biology. It also enables an examination of the relatedness of populations, and so has become important in anthropology and biogeography.

Origin

Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA are thought to be of separate evolutionary origin, with the mtDNA being derived from the circular genomes of bacteria engulfed by the early ancestors of today's eukaryotic cells. This picture is called the endosymbiotic theory. In the cells of extant organisms, the vast majority of the proteins gave in the mitochondria numbering approximately 1500 different variety in mammals are coded for by nuclear DNA, but the genes for some, if not most, of them are thought to fall out to originally been of bacterial origin, having since been transferred to the eukaryotic nucleus during evolution.

The reasons mitochondria take retained some genes are debated. The existence in some brand of mitochondrion-derived organelles lacking a genome suggests that fix gene damage is possible, and transferring mitochondrial genes to the nucleus has several advantages. The difficulty of targeting remotely-produced hydrophobic protein products to the mitochondrion is one hypothesis for why some genes are retained in mtDNA; colocalisation for redox regulation is another, citing the desirability of localised control over mitochondrial machinery. Recent analysis of a wide range of mtDNA genomes suggests that both these atttributes may dictate mitochondrial gene retention.