Genetic Variation for Mitochondrial Function in the New Zealand Freshwater Snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum

Joel Sharbrough, Jennifer L. Cruise, Megan Beetch, Nicole M. Enright, Maurine Neiman, Jill Pecon-Slattery

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The proteins responsible for mitochondrial function are encoded by 2 different genomes with distinct inheritance regimes, rendering rigorous inference of genotype-phenotype connections intractable for all but a few model systems. Asexual organisms provide a powerful means to address these challenges because offspring produced without recombination inherit both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from a single parent. As such, these offspring inherit mitonuclear genotypes that are identical to the mitonuclear genotypes of their parents and siblings but different from those of other asexual lineages. Here, we compared mitochondrial function across distinct asexual lineages of Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a New Zealand freshwater snail model for understanding the evolutionary consequences of asexuality. Our analyses revealed substantial phenotypic variation across asexual lineages at 3 levels of biological organization: mitogenomic, organellar, and organismal. These data demonstrate that different asexual lineages have different mitochondrial function phenotypes, likely reflecting heritable variation (i.e., the raw material for evolution) for mitochondrial function in P. antipodarum. The discovery of this variation combined with the methods developed here sets the stage to use P. antipodarum to study central evolutionary questions involving mitochondrial function, including whether mitochondrial mutation accumulation influences the maintenance of sexual reproduction in natural populations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)759-768
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Heredity
Volume108
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The American Genetic Association 2017. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Asexual reproduction
  • Cellular respiration
  • Mitochondrial function
  • Mitochondrial membrane potential
  • MtDNA copy number
  • Oxygen consumption

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