Who discovered mitochondrial DNA?
Mitochondrial DNA
Mutations of mitochondrial DNA can lead to a number of illnesses including exercise intolerance and Kearns–Sayre syndrome (KSS), which causes a person to lose full function of heart, eye, and muscle movements. Some evidence suggests that they might be major contributors to the aging process and age-associated pathologies.[62] Particularly in the context of disease, the proportion of mutant mtDNA molecules in a cell is termed heteroplasmy. The within-cell and between-cell distributions of heteroplasmy dictate the onset and severity of disease [63] and are influenced by complicated stochastic processes within the cell and during development.[26][64]