A Mitochondrial Bioenergetic Etiology of Disease

Overview

Journal J Clin Invest

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2013 Apr 2

PMID 23543062

Citations 167

Authors

Douglas C Wallace

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The classical Mendelian genetic perspective has failed to adequately explain the biology and genetics of common metabolic and degenerative diseases. This is because these diseases are primarily systemic bioenergetic diseases, and the most important energy genes are located in the cytoplasmic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Therefore, to understand these "complex" diseases, we must investigate their bioenergetic pathophysiology and consider the genetics of the thousands of copies of maternally inherited mtDNA, the more than 1,000 nuclear DNA (nDNA) bioenergetic genes, and the epigenomic and signal transduction systems that coordinate these dispersed elements of the mitochondrial genome.

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