DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN MITOCHONDRIAL DNA DURING THE FIRST SPLITTINGS OF THE TRANSMITOCHONDRIAL MOUSE EMBRYOS
M. E. Kustova, V. A. Sokolova, M. G. Bass, F. M. Zakharova, A. V. Sorokin, V. B. Vasilyev 1
Research Institute of Experimental Medicine RAMS, St. Petersburg;
1 e-mail: vadim@mtdna.ru
Distribution of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) among separate murine blastomeres was analyzed during the splitting of embryos in which the suspension of
human mitochondria had been injected at the one- or two-cell stage. Human mtDNA was detected by PCR with species specific primers. The total amount of the
two-and four-cell murine embryos analyzed in the study was 339. In all embryos examined the copies of human mi-tochondrial genome were revealed along with
murine mtDNA, which indicated the phenomenon of an artificially modeled heteroplasmy. The foreign mtDNA was not ubiquitous among the blastomeres of
transmitochondrial embryos. Mathematical analysis of the results showed that in the period between the injection of human mitochondria and the subsequent
splitting no equal distribution of the human mtDNA occurred in the cytoplasm. These results also point at the presence of more than 2-3 segregation units of mtDNA
in the entire pool of mitochondria (about 5 · 102) introduced into an embryo by microinjection.
Key words: mitochondria, mtDNA segregation, heteroplasmy, transgenic mice
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