mapkinase's Journal: The child of many mothers

Science magazine editor refered to an article in Genetics about mitochondrial heteroplasmy in many organizms.

mothers that were heteroplasmic were shown to pass it on to their offspring, and the pattern of inheritance suggested that heteroplasmy was genome-wide (in the mitochondria) and not locus-specific. Although these findings may be taken as consistent with biparental inheritance, the fact that high levels of cytoplasmic male sterility, caused by cytonuclear interactions, are known to occur in S. vulgaris suggests that heteroplasmy may be selected for within female individuals in some populations.