| First Author | Nakada K | Year | 2001 |
| Journal | Nat Med | Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 8 | Pages | 934-40 |
| PubMed ID | 11479626 | Mgi Jnum | J:70690 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:2138007 | Doi | 10.1038/90976 |
| Citation | Nakada K, et al. (2001) Inter-mitochondrial complementation: Mitochondria-specific system preventing mice from expression of disease phenotypes by mutant mtDNA. Nat Med 7(8):934-40 |
| abstractText | Here we investigated the pathogenesis of deletion mutant mitochondrial (mt)DNA by generating mice with mutant mtDNA carrying a 4696-basepair deletion (DeltamtDNA4696), and by using cytochrome c oxidase (COX) electron micrographs to identify COX activity at the individual mitochondrial level. All mitochondria in tissues with DeltamtDNA4696 showed normal COX activity until DeltamtDNA4696 accumulated predominantly; this prevented mice from expressing disease phenotypes. Moreover, we did not observe coexistence of COX-positive and -negative mitochondria within single cells. These results indicate the occurrence of inter-mitochondrial complementation through exchange of genetic contents between exogenously introduced mitochondria with DeltamtDNA4696 and host mitochondria with normal mtDNA. This complementation shows a mitochondria-specific mechanism for avoiding expression of deletion-mutant mtDNA, and opens the possibility of a gene therapy in which mitochondria possessing full-length DNA are introduced. |
