Dossier
passenger mutations
Coverage of passenger mutations in the Nexus archive.
- Mechanism of age-related accumulation of mtDNA mutations in human blood
A study published in Nature reveals that age-related accumulation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations in human blood is primarily caused by cryptic replication errors acting as passenger mutations, which become detectable with age due to somatic mosaicism, rather than oxidative damage. This challenges previous assumptions about the role of oxidative stress in mtDNA mutation accumulation.