Rethinking the mutation hypotheses of plant organellar DNA

Abstract

A recent analysis of genome copy numbers has demonstrated that reduced availability of homologous templates accelerates nucleotide substitution rates in plant mitochondrial DNA likely due to insufficient repair efficiency, reinforcing the importance of homologous recombination in plant DNA damage repair. This finding drives us to consider and compare the relevant hypotheses of the raising and variable mutation for plant organellar DNA, concluding that no single mechanism has a full explanation.

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