Abstract
Mitochondria are mostly inherited by maternal via, that is, only mitochondria from eggs are retained in the embryos. However, this general assumption of uniparentally transmitted, homoplasmic and non-recombining mitochondrial genomes is becoming more and more controversial. The presence of different sequences of mtDNA within a cell or individual, known as heteroplasmy, is increasingly reported in several taxon of animals, such as molluscs, arthropods and vertebrates. In this work, a considerable frequency of heteroplasmy were detected in the COI and 16S genes of the spider crab Maja brachydactyla, possibly associated to hybridisation with the congeneric species Maja squinado. This finding is a fact to keep in mind before addressing molecular analyses based on mitochondrial markers, since the assumption of maternal inheritance could lead to erroneous results. As M. brachydactyla is a commercial species, heteroplasmy is an important aspect to take into account for the fisheries management of this resource, since effective population size could be overestimated.
Highlights
Mitochondria are mostly inherited by maternal via, that is, only mitochondria from eggs are retained in the embryos
The presence of different sequences of mtDNA within a cell or individual was a rare phenomenon in animals, but new detection methods based on NGS (Next-Generation Sequencing) or qPCR are allowing their detection [6,7,8,9]
Heteroplasmy has been reported in many organisms such as insects [10, 11], crustaceans [12, 13], molluscs [14], fishes [15, 16], frogs [17] birds [18, 19], mice [20] and humans [21, 22], being the paternal leakage the primary cause of it
Summary
Mitochondria are mostly inherited by maternal via, that is, only mitochondria from eggs are retained in the embryos. Uniparental transmission of cytoplasmic genomes has had multiple and independent origins and it must involve a strong evolutionary advantage over biparental transmission [1, 2]. This general assumption of uniparentally transmitted, homoplasmic and non-recombining mitochondrial genomes is becoming more and more controversial [3,4,5]. The existence of heteroplasmy in the studied organisms can provide erroneous results in researches that use mitochondrial markers. This factor must be taken into consideration before interpreting the obtained results.
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