Opinion: The Central Dogma of Mitochondrial Genetics Needs Rewriting

The recent discovery of 17 people who have inherited maternal and paternal lines of mitochondrial DNA has major ramifications for medical and ancestry research.

Written byJohn D. Loike

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John D. Loike, a Professor of Biology at Touro College and University Systems, writes a regular column on bioethics for The Scientist.

Until last month, it was generally believed that mitochondria and their DNA are exclusively maternally inherited in humans. In a provocative report in PNAS, scientists identified 17 people from three unrelated families with a high level of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) inherited from both mothers and male ancestors. Now, it’s time to rethink the dogma of mitochondrial inheritance.

Earlier human studies using human polyploid embryos generated by IVF only detected paternal mtDNA up until the eight-cell stage of development. There was, however, one report in 2002 of a single male with mitochondrial myopathy, a condition affecting muscles, who expressed both maternal and paternal mtDNA. This observation is surprising to see in humans, even though many species (including algae, plants, yeast, and Drosophila) exhibit strict paternal ...

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Meet the Author

John D. Loike
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John Loike serves as the interim director of bioethics at New York Medical College and as a professor of biology at Touro University. He served previously as the codirector for graduate studies in the Department of Physiology Cellular Biophysics and director of Special Programs in the Center for Bioethics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His biomedical research focuses on how human white blood cells combat infections and cancer. Loike lectures internationally on emerging topics in bioethics, organizes international conferences, and has published more than 150 papers and abstracts in the areas of immunology, cancer, and bioethics. He earned his Ph.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
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