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Updated: May 8, 2026

Methodology for Accurate Detection of Mitochondrial DNA Methylation
Published on: May 20, 2018
Extreme nearly neutral evolution in mitochondrial genomes of laboratory mouse strains
Takahiro Yonezawa1, Masami Hasegawa1
1School of Life Sciences, Fudan Univeristy, HanDan Rd. 220, Shanghai, 200433, China; Institute of the Statistical Mathematics, Midori-cho 10-3, Tachikawa, Tokyo, 190-8562, Japan.
Abstract:
Relaxation of the selective constraint during the domestication process is known. In this study, we report unexpected closeness to neutral evolution of mitochondrial genomes of laboratory mouse strains: estimated non-synonymous/synonymous rate ratio being very close to 1 (ω^=1.32). Probably it is due to the extreme inbreeding extending over 100 years as well as to their recent origin (middle of the last millennium). There is no rate difference observed among three codon positions as well as ribosomal RNA and control regions. However, the amino acid substitutions occurred not randomly, and substitutions were more frequent between physico-chemically similar amino acids than between dissimilar ones. Probably this is inevitable consequence caused by the codon table itself, but not by selections. This implies that a large portion of the new mutations are conservative, and most of them are slightly deleterious and not lethal. It seems that, even though the selection pressures do not hold normally, the function of genes may not be impaired in most cases.
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