Dori Woods

Are mitochondrial DNA mutations under purifying selection in somatic tissues?

The paper reanalyzes mtDNA mutation data to determine if somatic mutations are under purifying selection, finding that apparent selection signals are due to germline mutations and most somatic mutations are neutral.

Evolutionary mismatch between nuclear and mitochondrial genomes does not promote reversion mutations in mtDNA.

The paper shows that apparent reversion mutations in mtDNA are not real but result from sample cross-contamination and NUMTs.