Chapter 4

EXTRANUCLEAR DNA

Anil Day and Joanna Poulton

Non-Mendelian Inheritance 59
The Search for Extranuclear DNA: Early Studies on Organelle Genomes 61
Detailed Characterization of Organelle DNA 65
Origins of Mitochondria and Plastids 66
Mitochondrial DNA 67
Plant Mitochondrial Genomes 73
Organization and Expression of Plastid DNA 75
Relocationof Organelle Genes to the Nucleus 77
Regulatory Interactions between Nucleus and Organelle 78
Vegetative Segregation, Recombination, and Homoplasmy 80
Organelle DNA Is a Useful Molecular Clock 81
Phenotypes Associated with Abnormal Mitochondrial DNA 81
Senescence 87
New Methods for Studying Organelle Genomes 88
Organelle Inheritance 89
Is Extranuclear DNA Located Outside Mitochondria and Plastids? 90
Acknowledgments 91
References 91

NON-MENDELIAN INHERITANCE
In the mid-nineteenth century Gregor Mendel's work on garden peas established
rules that governed the inheritance of visible differences between parent plants.
Mendel's work lay dormant for 40 years until it was rediscovered independently
by Carl Correns, Hugo 4e Vries, and Erich Tschermark von Seysenegg in 1900.
Mendel's rules stimulated much research on inheritance in the early twentieth
century. This work established Mendel's laws on the segregation of alleles and the
independent assortment of genes as the foundation of classical genetics. Work on
59