Genetics, Vol. 166, 883-894, February 2004, Copyright © 2004

Differential Segregation Patterns of Sperm Mitochondria in Embryos of the Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis)

Liqin Caoa, Ellen Kenchingtona,b, and Eleftherios Zourosc,a
a Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, Canada,
b Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 4A2, Canada
c Department of Biology, University of Crete, Iraklion, GR 71003 Crete, Greece

Corresponding author: Ellen Kenchington, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 1 Challenger Dr., P.O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 4A2, Canada., kenchingtone{at}mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca (E-mail)

Communicating editor: M. A. ASMUSSEN

In Mytilus, females carry predominantly maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) but males carry maternal mtDNA in their somatic tissues and paternal mtDNA in their gonads. This phenomenon, known as doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) of mtDNA, presents a major departure from the uniparental transmission of organelle genomes. Eggs of Mytilus edulis from females that produce exclusively daughters and from females that produce mostly sons were fertilized with sperm stained with MitoTracker Green FM, allowing observation of sperm mitochondria in the embryo by epifluorescent and confocal microscopy. In embryos from females that produce only daughters, sperm mitochondria are randomly dispersed among blastomeres. In embryos from females that produce mostly sons, sperm mitochondria tend to aggregate and end up in one blastomere in the two- and four-cell stages. We postulate that the aggregate eventually ends up in the first germ cells, thus accounting for the presence of paternal mtDNA in the male gonad. This is the first evidence for different behaviors of sperm mitochondria in developing embryos that may explain the tight linkage between gender and inheritance of paternal mitochondrial DNA in species with DUI.




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