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Published January 1, 1972 | public
Journal Article Open

Fate of Mitochondrial DNA in Human-Mouse Somatic Cell Hybrids

Abstract

Several hybrid lines between human and mouse somatic cells, containing one or two complements of mouse chromosomes and a reduced complement of human chromosomes, have been examined for the presence of mouse and human mitochondrial DNAs. For this analysis, advantage was taken of the fact that these two types of mitochondrial DNA have a buoyant density difference in CsCl gradients of 0.008 g/cm^3. In all the hybrid clones analyzed, which retained an average number of human chromosomes estimated conservatively to vary from 5 to 23, only mitochondrial DNA of mouse character was detected. It seems likely that either repression of relevant human genes by the mouse genome or loss of human chromosomes is responsible for these results. If the latter explanation is true, since chromosome loss under the conditions used here was substantially a random process, one would have to assume that the activity of nuclear genes distributed in many chromosomes is required for the survival of mitochondrial DNA.

Additional Information

Copyright © 1972 by the National Academy of Sciences Communicated by Boris Ephrussi, November 3, 1971 We thank Dr. Boris Ephrussi for the hospitality of his laboratory and for his valuable advice and continued interest in this work, Dr. Mary Weiss for helpful discussions, and Mme. Natalie Riecio for technical assistance. This work was supported by the aid of the Delegation Generale a la Recherche Scientifique, a research grant from the U.S. Public Health Service (GM-11726), a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Cancer Society (PF-657) (B.A.), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (G.A.).

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August 22, 2023
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