ISTOCK, WIR0MANThe mitochondrial genome of mice is only 16 kilobases long, comprising just 37 genes, yet its polymorphisms appear related to the metastatic potential of cancer, researchers report at the American Association of Cancer Research annual meeting in Chicago today (April 17). Researchers swapped the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA among several mouse strains and observed changes in immune function, microbiome composition, metabolomics, and tumor spread that tracked with mitochondrial type.
“People just assume something of 16 kilobases couldn’t be that critical for something so complicated,” Danny Welch, a cancer biologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center who presented his lab’s results, tells The Scientist.
The latest, unpublished findings build upon a 2017 report in Cancer Research by Welch’s group that showed that the mitochondrial genome was tied to the speed of cancer growth and metastasis. Mice of a strain called FVB that had inherited mitochondria from either of two other strains took longer to form tumors and had less tumor spread than mice with native FVB mitochondria, Welch and his colleagues reported.
In the latest experiments, the researchers took cancer cells with the mouse strains’ original nuclear and mitochondrial genomic backgrounds and infused them ...
