Mitochondrial DNA mutations in human colonic crypt stem cells

The mitochondrial genome encodes 13 essential subunits of the respiratory chain and has remarkable genetics based on uniparental inheritance. Within human populations, the mitochondrial genome has a high rate of sequence divergence with multiple polymorphic variants and thus has played a major role in examining the evolutionary history of our species. In recent years it has also become apparent that pathogenic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations...