Stable heteroplasmy at the single-cell level is facilitated by intercellular exchange of mtDNA

Jayaprakash, A. D., Benson, E. K., Gone, S., Liang, R., Shim, J., Lambertini, L., Toloue, M. M., Wigler, M., Aaronson, S. A., Sachidanandam, R. (February 2015) Stable heteroplasmy at the single-cell level is facilitated by intercellular exchange of mtDNA. Nucleic Acids Research, 43 (4). pp. 2177-2187. ISSN 0305-1048

URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25653158
DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkv052

Abstract

Eukaryotic cells carry two genomes, nuclear (nDNA) and mitochondrial (mtDNA), which are ostensibly decoupled in their replication, segregation and inheritance. It is increasingly appreciated that heteroplasmy, the occurrence of multiple mtDNA haplotypes in a cell, plays an important biological role, but its features are not well understood. Accurately determining the diversity of mtDNA has been difficult, due to the relatively small amount of mtDNA in each cell (<1% of the total DNA), the intercellular variability of mtDNA content and mtDNA pseudogenes (Numts) in nDNA. To understand the nature of heteroplasmy, we developed Mseek, a novel technique to purify and sequence mtDNA. Mseek yields high purity (>90%) mtDNA and its ability to detect rare variants is limited only by sequencing depth, providing unprecedented sensitivity and specificity. Using Mseek, we confirmed the ubiquity of heteroplasmy by analyzing mtDNA from a diverse set of cell lines and human samples. Applying Mseek to colonies derived from single cells, we find heteroplasmy is stably maintained in individual daughter cells over multiple cell divisions. We hypothesized that the stability of heteroplasmy could be facilitated by intercellular exchange of mtDNA. We explicitly demonstrate this exchange by co-culturing cell lines with distinct mtDNA haplotypes. Our results shed new light on the maintenance of heteroplasmy and provide a novel platform to investigate features of heteroplasmy in normal and diseased states.

Item Type: Paper
Subjects: bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification
bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > genomes
CSHL Authors:
Communities: CSHL labs > Wigler lab
CSHL Cancer Center Program > Cancer Genetics
Depositing User: Matt Covey
Date: 4 February 2015
Date Deposited: 17 Feb 2015 17:17
Last Modified: 14 Oct 2015 16:52
PMCID: PMC4344500
Related URLs:
URI: https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/31224

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