Ancient human mitochondrial genomes encode antimicrobial peptides
Mitochondria are bacteria-derived organelles that coordinate major innate immune pathways, but whether mitochondrial genomes themselves encode direct antimicrobial functions is underexplored. Here, we test the hypothesis that ancient human mitochondrial DNA is not only an evolutionary record, but also contains encrypted peptide sequences with the capacity to contribute to host defense. Because…
We haven't written up this one. bioRxiv has the full story — the link below goes straight to it.
