The Café con Sal program held a new session this Tuesday in which Ángel Pérez Diz, full professor at the University of Vigo and researcher in the Population Genetics and Cytogenetics Group (XB2, CIM), presented the report Biparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA in humans: what can research with marine mussels provide us? The UVigo professor provided attendees with the main conclusions of a recent and controversial study on the inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in humans and its relationship with current knowledge on the double uniparental inheritance (DUI) of mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) in mussels, in addition to providing a brief description of the general objectives of the project Mitogenomics and mitoproteomics of marine mussels with double uniparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA and different genetic background, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, and on which the XB2 group is working at the Ecimat facilities.
In his presentation, Pérez Diz recalled the recent publication of a paper with results that challenge the general rule that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) inheritance in humans (and in metazoans in general) is strictly maternal. Currently, more than 100 species of bivalves have been identified, including marine mussels (Mytilus spp.), which follow an unusual model of mtDNA inheritance called Doubly Uniparental Inheritance (DUI), where the inheritance of highly divergent maternal and paternal mitogenomes is the general rule, not the exception. Exceptions, the researcher pointed out, could be useful for investigating the molecular mechanisms that underlie the transmission of paternal mtDNA to offspring and although these mechanisms are currently unknown, there have already been some interesting advances in this direction with proteomic results that also contribute to this search.
Precisely, the XB2 group will collaborate through high-throughput genomic and proteomic technology to these advances, thanks, as Ángel Pérez Diz explained, to the project Mitogenomics and mitoproteomics of marine mussels with double uniparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA and different genetic background, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. The project, led by the speaker himself and by Paloma Morán, has as one of its objectives to know the potential involvement of mitochondrial proteins selected in several mussel species in the mechanism of double uniparental inheritance (DUI), reproductive isolation and the influence of DUI on sex determination. The results, as explained by the UVigo researcher, could be useful to understand the exceptional cases reported in humans.
The research activity of the XB2 group and the Café con sal conference series have the support of the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union, through their co-financing under the FEDER/FSE Galicia 2014-2020 Operational Program.
Source: DUVI
