Submitted by nodeciapalabras t3_ylu0ir in askscience
GOU_FallingOutside t1_iv1phfi wrote
Reply to comment by KarlDeutscheMarx in Why don't we have Neandertal mitochondrial DNA? by nodeciapalabras
Correct, and possibly not even then. The mitochondrial genome is highly conserved — functional defects would be catastrophic for an organism.
EDIT: That is, there’s enough variation for it to serve as a “molecular clock,” but there’s not a lot of tolerance for error. It would be more accurate for me to say most regions of the genome are conserved.
(Also, not a geneticist, so I’d be happy to be corrected by experts.)
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