Oleg Zabluda's blog
Friday, October 26, 2012
 
We, just like all other mammals and majority of animals, plants and fungi (go Eukaryotes!), inherit our mitochondria...
We, just like all other mammals and majority of animals, plants and fungi (go Eukaryotes!), inherit our mitochondria from the mother. Spermatozoon does have mitochondria, but it's mostly concentrated near the tail, where it makes the energy to turn the tail to swim.  Tail area almost never penetrates into the egg, unlike the payload (head). In vitro fertilization has to be careful to preserve this behavior. Whatever little paternal mtDNA the head has, is targeted for destruction inside the fertilized egg, and subsequent 4-8-cell stage of embryo development. Whatever survives the destruction, is simply diluted by the much larger (1000x) amount of maternal mtDNA of the egg.

However, the process is not 100% reliable. There was at least one 28-year-old man (in 2002), who inherited 90% of his muscle mitochondria from his father. All his other tissues contained only maternally derived mtDNA

Counterintuitively, far from becoming some kind of a superman, he was a weakling [1].

On the plus side, his father was, partially, also his mother.

Also see
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204076204578076530392342640.html
about monkeys with 1 father and 2 mothers by the same mechanism.

These point to an omission in my post
https://plus.google.com/112065430692128821190/posts/E2pWAnGEi2c

I needed to address the possibility for a man to be his own second mother or grandmother.

#thisaintgonnaendwell  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_mtDNA_transmission

Another variation is Heteroplasmy, which may result from a mutation during development which is propagated to only a subset of the adult cells, or may occur when two slightly different mitochondrial sequences are inherited from the mother as a result of several hundred mitochondria being present in the ovum. I will call is "Mitochondrial Chimerism" for now. 

[1] 
"""
mitochondrial myopathy and severe, lifelong exercise intolerance. He had never been able to run more than a few steps. His cardiac and pulmonary functions were normal, and he was otherwise well. Both parents and a 23-year-old sister were healthy and had normal exercise tolerance.

The myopathic symptoms were associated with severe lactic acidosis induced by minor physical exertion. His plasma lactate level after walking 100 m at a slow pace was 6 to 8 mmol per liter (the normal level is below 2.5 mmol per liter). His creatine kinase levels were marginally elevated in periods of no physical exertion. Biopsies of the right and left quadriceps muscle revealed that 15 percent of the fibers were of the ragged-red type, a result consistent with the accumulation of abnormal mitochondria with impaired respiratory function. Biochemical analysis demonstrated an isolated deficiency of the mitochondrial enzyme complex I of the respiratory chain in muscle. There were no signs of muscular atrophy or weakness. The abnormal findings in muscle-biopsy specimens from both thighs and the finding of severely impaired oxygen extraction when the forearm muscles were repeatedly contracted8 suggested generalized muscular involvement.
"""

Paternal Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020350
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020350

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