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Mitochondrial-Nuclear Interactions in Mitochondria

In my search for an article, I stumbled upon a study done by researchers at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Their article is titled, Evolved genetic and phenotypic differences due to mitochondrial-nuclear interactions. These researchers conducted a study to determine the effect of Mitochondrial and Nuclear genomes interactions in the Atlantic killifish, and its adaptability to differing water temperatures, which is dependent on metabolic rate. I wasn’t familiar with Mitochondrial genomes, as I assumed that all of the genetic code is found in the nucleus. But I was intrigued.


Come to find out, the Mitochondria does actually contain a very small number of genomes. I was interested in this new information, though I didn’t fully understand what the rest of the study consisted of. However, I was happy to find two words that I was familiar with. “Oxidative Phosphorylation.”


Oxidative Phosphorylation is the process in which ATP is synthesized due to the process of transporting of electrons on the Electron Transport Chain which is found in the inner membrane of Mitochondria. These electrons are passed through different protein complexes on the chain, and the end result of this process occurs when hydrogen ions (protons) are able to be pumped through the last complex, named ATP Synthase. Note that these five complexes, are made up of “approximately 89 proteins encoded by the two genomes in animal cells: all 13 mitochondrial proteins and 76 nuclear proteins” (Baris et al., 2017). So to explain, these complexes that allow for Oxidative Phosphorylation to occur are made up of mitochondrial and nuclear proteins. 

These researchers looked at the different Mitochondrial-nuclear interactions in the Atlantic killifish, and how these interactions affected the overall form of an allele that is formed due to the interactions. Through looking at over 11,000 nuclear DNA sequences, there were “significant differences in nuclear allele frequencies” (Baris et al., 2017) This caused the researchers to believe that the different frequencies cause a difference in metabolic processes, which affects the Atlantic killifish's adaptability to temperature change. These results from this study support the idea that metabolic processes depend on the interaction of Mitochondrial and Nuclear proteins in the Mitochondria.
-E Dunn




Baris, T. Z., Wagner, D. N., Dayan, D. I., Du, X., Blier, P. U., Pichaud, N., Oleksiak, M. F., Crawford, D. L. (2017) Evolved genetic and phenotypic differences due to mitochondrial-nuclear interactions, PLOS, Vol. 13, Issue 3, 1-23



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