Why Paternal Mitochondria Aren’t Passed On to Offspring Caenorhabditis elegans WIKIMEDIA, NIH Researchers have uncovered a clue as to why a mother’s mitochondria are passed on to her offspring while the father’s are not. Studying sperm cells from the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues found that a gene called cps-6 encodes a mitochondrial endonuclease that degrades paternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) following fertilization of an egg. Delaying this process can be fatal to the embryo, the team reported yesterday (June 23) in Science . The research “comes closest to elucidating a key development process that ...
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