Mitochondrial DNA

Okay.

So this mitochondrial DNA being separate from our other DNA, and yet it's in the cell nucleus kind of alongside What is it within our biology that connects these two?

So the mitochondrial DNA has kind of different properties than the chromosomal DNA.

Most of the genes that control the nucleus are actually on the chromosomes, but some of it is in the nucleus.

And the DNA is in the mitochondria.

So there's like a back and forth communication there.

Interesting.

So with the, with that mitochondrial DNA, and it having significantly less amount of genes creating it.

There was one in Spain, there was one in Italy, there was one in Greece and the Balkans, and in Asia Minor.

And you can now take the mitochondrial DNA out of these various organisms that are plotted here, and you can reconstruct where they Ice Age, and how they got back into Northern Europe.

So for example, most of the grasshoppers of Northern Europe came out of the Balkans, and the ones that spent that time in Spain never got over the Pyrenees.

The hedgehogs managed to get over the Pyrenees and spread through France and Belgium and the Netherlands.

However, about at that point they met the hedgehogs that were moving north from Italy, and there were a bunch of other hedgehogs that were coming up from the The bears, interestingly, managed to do just fine getting out over the Pyrenees, and they moved right up into Scandinavia, and up in northern Sweden they had met some bears, probably that had been in the Ukraine and had come out from north of the Black Sea, and so forth.

So it's possible, using mitochondrial DNA molecular phylogenies, to reconstruct the recent history of movements of animals across the planet, and trees across the planet, and to understand why it is that there are certain places where we see hybrid zones.

And in fact here are some hybrid zones in Europe.

These are places where you will frequently run into hybrids, and they are there because populations are coming back together that have been isolated in the Ice Ages and breeding with each other.

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Mitochondrial DNA is fascinating.

Um, you can track your ancestry in like a much bigger, longer way than just like your regular chromosomal, like, you know, DNA thing.

In an aging or unhealthy person, the leak begins to outpace the cleanup.

Free radicals damage proteins, membranes, and the mitochondrial DNA itself.

Two, DNA mutations.

Mitochondrial DNA sits right next to the source of these free radicals.

It's like keeping your medical records on the engine block.

Over decades, mutations accumulate.

By age 70, the average human has detectable mitochondrial DNA mutations in heart, brain, gut, and skeletal muscle.

Three, dysfunction.

But the top geneticists in the world said that was rubbish.

But now we know a lot more and we know that there's things like mitochondrial DNA where the mitochondria are responsible for metabolism.

They're responsible for sort of cold shock responses.

There's lots of stuff to do with adaptation to the environment and interaction and cellular death and metabolism and protein production and all the stuff you need for growing meat.

So pretty important.

And then 99% of all the mitochondrial DNA in every calf comes from the mother.

So it turns out that science proved the old cowman right, and the clever geneticists were wrong on this, which they stay quite about.

Because science is always right, isn't it? Eventually.

She makes the case that Walter Sickert, a German-British painter, was Jack the Ripper.

Part of her argument is based on forensic analysis of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA.

Apparently, a sequence of mtDNA found on some of the so-called Ripper letters is a match for sequences found on letters written by Sickert.

However, this claim and others are controversial and widely disputed.

The Ripper letters may well be hoaxes, in which case they don't prove anything.

This is based on DNA analysis of a shawl.

It's thought to have belonged to Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim.

According to Edwards, mtDNA found on the shawl has been matched with the mtDNA of a living relative of Kosminski.

Now here, on the flip side, how does chronic inflammation end up damaging your mitochondria to create this negative spiral? The excess reactive oxygen species that are part inherent in chronic inflammation will damage mitochondria.

The MT DNA is just a reference to the mitochondrial DNA.

Again, your matriarchal DNA that's in your mitochondria.

You end up getting mutations there because of chronic inflammation.