[PRESS RELEASE, 7 October 2012]The risk of a child to inherit
mitochondrial diseases – i. e. malfunction in what is usually
referred to as the power plants of the cell – is largely decided
when the future mother herself is still an embryo. This
according to a novel study by scientists at Karolinska
Institutet and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, which is
published in the journal Nature Genetics. Mitochondria are small
structures within almost every cell in the body, responsible
mainly for energy production and fat metabolism. Their function
is very important, and they contain their own genome, called
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The mitochondrial genome is inherited
via the mother, where hundreds of thousands of mtDNA copies are
packed in the female germ cell. “Mutations in the mitochondrial
genome can cause a variety of severe diseases, such as muscle
weakness, neurodegenerative diseases, heart disease and
diabetes”, says Christoph Freyer, one of the study authors.
“Many of these diseases only develop once