Mitochondrial ageing

Mitochondria in largely postmitotic cells (e.g. cardiomyocytes, neurons or skeletal muscle myotubes) have a limited life span of a few weeks. Their replacement during normal turnover requires an intergenomic coordination between the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA, encoding for 13 protein subunits of the respiratory chain, two mitochondrial rRNAs and the 22 mitochondrial tRNAs) and the nuclear genome (encoding for more than 99 % of the mitochondrial proteins). The mtDNA contains only a very small non-coding region, it is exposed to radicals generated by the respiratory chain during aerobic ATP formation, and mitochondrial DNA repair capacity is rather low. Therefore, oxidative damage of mtDNA, accumulating with age, should affect mitochondrially encoded proteins, but the high number of mitochondrial genomes (roughly 10 per mitochondrion) allows a certain degree of heteroplasmy (different genomes within a mitochondrion) without effects on phenotype. Therefore, age-associated increments in mtDNA damage are to a major extent an epiphenomenon. On the other hand, however, there are clonal accumulations of damaged/mutated mtDNA within individual cells up to homoplasmy of mutant mtDNA, which are either neutral with regard to phenotype or which cause substantial phenotype alterations: hyporespiratory phenotype (less radicals and less ATP!) or a phenotype with a dysproportionate respiratory chain, i.e. partial defects within the chain with enhanced radical formation proximal to this defect and with enhanced susceptibility to oxidative stress-triggered apoptosis, probably explaining the progressive loss of cardiomyocytes with advanced age. Thus, a minority of age-associated alterations in mtDNA may explain important features of the ageing heart: myocyte losses and myocyte heterogeneity. However, documentation of definite proof for this possibility is lacking and may be difficult.