Revealed – why mitochondria is passed to offspring only through mother
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Shortly after a sperm penetrates an egg during fertilisation, the sperm’s mitochondria are degraded while the egg’s mitochondria persist. The paternal mitochondria were found to partially
self-destruct before the mitochondria were surrounded by autophagosomes, which target components within a cell and facilitate their degradation, said Qinghua Zhou from the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, a US-based nonprofit organisation.