High incidence of heteroplasmy in the mtDNA of a natural population of the spider crab Maja brachydactyla

0301 basic medicine Brachyura Science Incidence Q R Maja squinado Heteroplasmy DNA, Mitochondrial Mitochondrial DNA Mitochondria 03 medical and health sciences Genome, Mitochondrial Medicine Animals Maja brachydactyla 14. Life underwater Hybridization Research Article
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230243 Publication Date: 2020-03-19T17:34:34Z
ABSTRACT
Mitochondria are mostly inherited by maternal via, that is, only mitochondria from eggs are retained in the embryos. However, this general assumption of uniparentally transmitted, homoplasmic and non-recombining mitochondrial genomes is becoming more and more controversial. The presence of different sequences of mtDNA within a cell or individual, known as heteroplasmy, is increasingly reported in several taxon of animals, such as molluscs, arthropods and vertebrates. In this work, a considerable frequency of heteroplasmy were detected in the COI and 16S genes of the spider crab Maja brachydactyla, possibly associated to hybridisation with the congeneric species Maja squinado. This finding is a fact to keep in mind before addressing molecular analyses based on mitochondrial markers, since the assumption of maternal inheritance could lead to erroneous results. As M. brachydactyla is a commercial species, heteroplasmy is an important aspect to take into account for the fisheries management of this resource, since effective population size could be overestimated.
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