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J L Elson

Publications and source records attributed to J L Elson.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Mitochondrial disease in adults: a scale to monitor progression and treatment.

The natural history of mitochondrial diseases is poorly understood, limiting our ability to offer prognostic advice to patients or to evaluate therapy. One major obstacle to improving our understanding is the lack of a clinical rating scale to monitor the extensive clinical spectrum of mitochondrial disease. In this article, the authors describe the development and validation of a practical and semiquantitative rating scale, the Newcastle Mitochondrial Disease Adult Scale.

Disease Progression↗
PubMed2005

Sequence variation in mitochondrial complex I genes: mutation or polymorphism?

BACKGROUND: Defects of the mitochondrial genome are recognised as common causes of genetic disease. Sequencing of large portions or even the entire mitochondrial genome is routine in many laboratories for the investigation of mitochondrial disease. However, establishing whether a detected sequence change is polymorphic or pathogenic is still a major difficulty because of its highly polymorphic nature. This has major implications for the patient and the family. OBJECTIVE: To describe a scoring system for determining the likelihood that a given sequence variant in one of the seven mitochondrially encoded complex I (MTND) genes is truly pathogenic. RESULTS: The scoring system was applied to 50 reported MTND mutations. Using this system, 21 of the mutations analysed fell into the group of neutral sequence variants, 10 were classified as possibly pathogenic, three as probably pathogenic, and 16 as almost certainly pathogenic. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed scoring system should advance the interpretation of sequence variants and ensure that candidate pathogenic mutations are rigorously investigated.

DNA, Mitochondrial↗
PubMed2004

Comparative genomics and the evolution of human mitochondrial DNA: assessing the effects of selection.

This article provides evidence that selection has been a significant force during the evolution of the human mitochondrial genome. Both gene-by-gene and whole-genome approaches were used here to assess selection in the 560 mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) coding-region sequences that were used previously for reduced-median-network analysis. The results of the present analyses were complex, in that the action of selection was not indicated by all tests, but this is not surprising, in view of the characteristics and limitations of the different analytical methods. Despite these limitations, there is evidence for both gene-specific and lineage-specific variation in selection. Whole-genome sliding-window approaches indicated a lack of selection in large-scale segments of the coding region. In other tests, we analyzed the ratio of nonsynonymous-to-synonymous substitutions in the 13 protein-encoding mtDNA genes. The most straightforward interpretation of those results is that negative selection has acted on the mtDNA during evolution. Single-gene analyses indicated significant departures from neutrality in the CO1, ND4, and ND6 genes, although the data also suggested the possible operation of positive selection on the AT6 gene. Finally, our results and those of other investigators do not support a simple model in which climatic adaptation has been a major force during human mtDNA evolution.

DNA, Mitochondrial↗
PubMed2001

Random intracellular drift explains the clonal expansion of mitochondrial DNA mutations with age.

Human tissues acquire somatic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations with age. Very high levels of specific mtDNA mutations accumulate within individual cells, causing a defect of mitochondrial oxidative metabolism. This is a fundamental property of nondividing tissues, but it is not known how it comes about. To explore this problem, we developed a model of mtDNA replication within single human cells. Using this model, we show that relaxed replication of mtDNA alone can lead, through random genetic drift, to the clonal expansion of single mutant events during human life. Significant expansions primarily develop from mutations acquired during a critical period in childhood or early adult life.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Analysis of European mtDNAs for recombination.

The standard paradigm postulates that the human mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) is strictly maternally inherited and that, consequently, mtDNA lineages are clonal. As a result of mtDNA clonality, phylogenetic and population genetic analyses should therefore be free of the complexities imposed by biparental recombination. The use of mtDNA in analyses of human molecular evolution is contingent, in fact, on clonality, which is also a condition that is critical both for forensic studies and for understanding the transmission of pathogenic mtDNA mutations within families. This paradigm, however, has been challenged recently by Eyre-Walker and colleagues. Using two different tests, they have concluded that recombination has contributed to the distribution of mtDNA polymorphisms within the human population. We have assembled a database that comprises the complete sequences of 64 European and 2 African mtDNAs. When this set of sequences was analyzed using any of three measures of linkage disequilibrium, one of the tests of Eyre-Walker and colleagues, there was no evidence for mtDNA recombination. When their test for excess homoplasies was applied to our set of sequences, only a slight excess of homoplasies was observed. We discuss possible reasons that our results differ from those of Eyre-Walker and colleagues. When we take the various results together, our conclusion is that mtDNA recombination has not been sufficiently frequent during human evolution to overturn the standard paradigm.

Africa↗