Abstract
Mitochondrial homoplasmy, which is maintained by strictly maternal inheritance and a series of bottlenecks, is thought to be an adaptive condition for metazoans. Doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) is a unique mode of mitochondrial transmission found in bivalve species, in which two distinct mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) lines are present, one inherited through eggs (F) and one through sperm (M). During development, the two lines segregate in a sex- and tissue-specific manner: females lose M during embryogenesis, whereas males actively segregate it in the germ line. These two pivotal events are still poorly characterized. Here we investigated mtDNA replication dynamics during embryogenesis and pre-adulthood of the venerid Ruditapes philippinarum using real-time quantitative PCR. We found that both mtDNAs do not detectably replicate during early embryogenesis, and that the M line might be lost from females around 24 h of age. A rise in mtDNA copy number was observed before the first reproductive season in both sexes, with the M mitochondrial genome replicating more than the F in males, and we associate these boosts to the early phase of gonad production. As evidence indicates that DUI relies on the same molecular machine of mitochondrial maternal inheritance that is common in most animals, our data are relevant not only to DUI but also to shed light on how differential segregations of mtDNA variants, in the same nuclear background, may be controlled during development.