‘Eve-olution’ – natural selection may help women live longer

‘Eve-olution’ – natural selection may help women live longer - Health News - NHS Choices

 But mitochondrial DNA is different in that only females pass on their mitochondria to their offspring.

This is thought to be responsible for an effect that has been termed as the ‘Mother’s Curse’ by geneticists.

The ‘curse’ is that mutations in mitochondrial DNA that are harmful to females will be filtered out by the process of natural selection. Women with beneficial mutations are more likely to survive and reproduce than women with harmful mutations.

But men are essentially an evolutionary ‘dead end’ for mitochondrial DNA. There is no evolutionary pressure filtering out mutations that are harmful to males, while at same time, promoting ‘useful male’ mutations.

Mitochondria are also thought to play a role in aging in the cell as they produce free radicals which can damage the cell, believed to be one part of aging.

women’s mitochondrial DNA could accumulate mutations which are beneficial to her, or do her little or no harm, but are detrimental in a male, including mutations that contribute to making men age faster than women. As males do not pass on mitochondria to their offspring, it would not be possible for mutations that are detrimental to males to be gradually filtered out through natural selection.

The researchers concluded that they had shown that mitochondrial DNA contains variations that affect male aging specifically and not females.