© Indiana UniversityThis image shows assistant professor Kristi Montooth, Indiana University, left, with alumnus Mo Siddiq, Indiana University, a co-author on the new research characterizing a disruptive interaction between genomes.
A team of biologists from Indiana University and Brown University believes it has discovered the mechanism by which interacting mutations in mitochondrial and nuclear DNA produce an incompatible genotype that reduces reproductive fitness and delays development in fruit flies.
The new research, led by IU biologists Kristi Montooth and Colin Meiklejohn and including former IU undergraduate researcher Mo Siddiq, describes the cause and consequences of an interaction between the two genomes that co-exist within eukaryotic cells. Animal mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, is a small but important genome that encodes a handful of proteins that are essential to oxidative phosphorylation, the pathway that produces the adenosine triphosphate molecule that fuels cellular metabolism.
With this new characterization of a disruptive interaction between mtDNA and nuclear DNA mutations, the scientists provide one of the few mapped cases of a fitness-reducing mitochondrial-nuclear incompatibility.
The genetic interaction that IU biologists mapped, in collaboration with Brown University biologist David Rand, is between mutations that are present in natural populations, rather than being induced in the lab. This has important consequences for understanding genetically complex human diseases.
Many human diseases, such as neuromuscular and neurodegenerative disorders, are associated with mutations in mitochondrial transfer RNAs, or tRNAs, but a single mutation can be highly variable in the degree to which it leads to disease.
Comment: Over three years ago, this editor was told by a meat producer that 95% of Ireland's cattle are fed imported GMO soy. The global food supply has been changed, which means that people have been changed. At least the people are aware that GMO is everywhere now, despite the ridiculous pretense upheld by governments which insist that it is not.