Male Drosophila suzukiiWIKIMEDIA, MARTIN COOPERMost animals inherit mitochondria from their mothers. Now, at team of scientists has shown that, in Drosophila, the paternal contribution of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is degraded in the sperm in a process that depends on a subunit of the fruit fly mitochondrial DNA polymerase called Tamas. Their results were published last week (March 16) in Current Biology.
“What’s striking about this study is that this gene, tamas, encodes a subunit of the mitochondrial DNA polymerase, which is the enzyme responsible for replicating the mtDNA,” said Damian Dowling of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who did not participate in the work. “It’s a completely new function for this gene that was not known prior to this study.”
The role for Tamas is “surprising,” said Eli Arama of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who was not involved in the study. “Instead of replicating the DNA, basically it is required to degrade it,” he explained.
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) found that Tamas associates with mtDNA specifically when the mtDNA is being degraded during Drosophila spermatogenesis. They used ...
