system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Mitochondria have their own DNA; do all mitochondria in a person’s body share the same DNA?
gpt
You normally inherit your mitochondria from your mother. However, as they replicate, they tend to collect mutations. Eventually you will have subpopulations of mitochondria with slightly different genomes, what we call heteroplasmy. They typically aren't particularly common, maybe accounting for 10% of all mitochondria. But because they are randomly assorted between dividing cells, it is possible for a cell to inherit a significant proportion of mitochondria with a deleterious variant, impacting the viability of the cell, and potentially causing a localized mitochondrial disease.