A nuclear-encoded endonuclease governs the paternal transmission of mitochondria in Cucumis plants.

Authors

Jia Shen, Xiaolong Lyu, Xinyang Xu, Zheng Wang, Yuejian Zhang, Chenhao Wang, Eduardo D Munaiz, Mingfang Zhang, Michael J Havey, Weisong Shou

Published in

Nature communications. Volume 16. Issue 1. Pages 4266. May 08, 2025. Epub May 08, 2025.

Abstract

Non-Mendelian transmission of mitochondria has been well established across most eukaryotes, however the genetic mechanism that governs this uniparental inheritance remains unclear. Plants in the genus Cucumis, specifically melon and cucumber, exhibit paternal transmission of the mitochondrial (mt) DNA, making them excellent models for exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying mitochondrial transmission. Here, we develop a toolkit to screen for mutants in mitochondrial inheritance (mti), and use fine mapping to successfully identify a mitochondrially targeted endonuclease gene (MTI1) controlling mitochondrial transmission. Knockout of MTI1 results in a shift from paternal to bi-parental inheritance of the mtDNA, confirming the crucial role of MTI1 in uniparental inheritance of mitochondria. Moreover, we demonstrate that MTI1 exhibits robust endonuclease activity both in vitro and in vivo, specifically expresses in mitochondria of the fertilized ovule within 24 h of pollination. Collectively, this study reveals that a nuclear-encoded but mitochondria-targeted gene plays a causative role in governing the non-Mendelian mitochondrial inheritance, revolutionizing our knowledge about mitochondrial DNA transmission.

PMID:
40341554
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 09 May 2025.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.