Aubrey de Grey wrote:
>> There is sure to be, because this is a virtually inevitable result of
> the rapid cell division during embryogenesis. Cells with ramdomly lower
> levels of mtDNA damage will typically divide more rapidly because they
> have better ATP synthesis capacity, and their descendents will form the
> bulk of the organism. This is probably accentuated by the fact that
> mitochondria can't divide very fast unless they are genetically intact.
>
In that case, if there is no selection mechanism during meiosis itself,
there should be no difference in mtDNA from randomly selected pre-ovulatory
egg cells and randomly selected other tissue cells from same organism. Has
anyone ever looked into that?
> There's the intercellular competition described above; there's also a
> lot of selection at ovulation (many eggs begin to mature but only one
> gets out of the ovary each month), though we don't know how this is
> driven;
Is there less mtDNA damage in post-ovulatory eggs than in other cells in
the same organism?
-Iuval
