Recombination in Human Mitochondrial DNA?

Corresponding author: Carsten Wiuf, 1 S. Parks Rd., Oxford OX1 3TG, England., wiuf{at}stats.ox.ac.uk (E-mail)

Communicating editor: J. HEIN

The possibility of recombination in human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been hotly debated over the last few years. In this study, a general model of recombination in circular molecules is developed and applied to a recently published African sample (n = 21) of complete mtDNA sequences. It is shown that the power of correlation measures to detect recombination in circular molecules can be vanishingly small and that the data are consistent with the given model and no recombination only if the overall heterogeneity in mutation rate is <0.09.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. J. White and N. J. Gemmell Can Indirect Tests Detect a Known Recombination Event in Human mtDNA? Mol. Biol. Evol., July 1, 2009; 26(7): 1435 - 1439. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				B. Gantenbein, V. Fet, I. A Gantenbein-Ritter, and F. Balloux Evidence for recombination in scorpion mitochondrial DNA (Scorpiones: Buthidae) Proc R Soc B, April 7, 2005; 272(1564): 697 - 704. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. Stadler and L. F. Delph Ancient mitochondrial haplotypes and evidence for intragenic recombination in a gynodioecious plant PNAS, September 3, 2002; 99(18): 11730 - 11735. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				H. Innan and M. Nordborg Recombination or Mutational Hot Spots in Human mtDNA? Mol. Biol. Evol., July 1, 2002; 19(7): 1122 - 1127. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				G. McVean, P. Awadalla, and P. Fearnhead A Coalescent-Based Method for Detecting and Estimating Recombination From Gene Sequences Genetics, March 1, 2002; 160(3): 1231 - 1241. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]