Immigrants to the Nucleus ; Analysis of Mitochondrial-like Fragments in Human Genome

From the origin of eukaryotic cells to the present, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) fragments continuously have transferred to the nucleus and become nuclear-mitochondrial DNA; NUMT. Recent studies indicate that the creations of NUMTs are mediated by non-homologous end joining repair [1]; mtDNA fragments are inserted and joined with nuclear break ends when nuclear double strand breaks (DSB) occur. However, the characteristics of NUMT-source mtDNA sites and nuclear NUMT-insertion sites are not well understood. Therefore, we investigated the displacement frequency of NUMT-source mtDNA fragments and the features of nuclear NUMT-insertion sites. In addition, we also surveyed the function of NUMTs.