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From: Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Science has a news article up about "living fossils"
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:09:51 +0000
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On 18/03/2024 14:23, John Harshman wrote:
> 
> I'm afraid your understanding is wrong. Cyt b is part of the electron 
> transport chain. While it's true that most of the genes retained by 
> animal mitochondria are crucial parts of ATP production, so are many of 
> the genes lost from the mitochondrial genome after transfer to the 
> nuclear genome. Many of the proteins involved have to be imported into 
> the mitochondrion, which doesn't seem at all optimal. This seems more 
> like constructive neutral evolution than adaptive evolution. Now of 
> course loss of a crucial gene can only be neutral if it's already been 
> transferred to the nucleus, but that sort of transfer is quite common. 
> The usual fate of such transfers ("numts") is to decay over time, but 
> during the short period when they're functional, the mitochondrial gene 
> could potentially be lost.

For a mitochondrial gene to be transferred to the nuclear genome, not 
only does a copy have to be integrated into the nuclear genome, and 
transcribed, but the resulting protein has to be imported into the 
mitochrondrion. If I understand correctly that usually (universally?) 
requires the acquisition of a mitochondrial targeting sequence.

-- 
alias Ernest Major