MITOCHONDRIAL DISTRIBUTION AND INHERITANCE

Mechanisms mediating the inheritance of mitochondria are poorly unders tood, but recent studies with the yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe have begun to identify components that facil itate this essential process. These components have been identified th rough the analysis of conditional yeast mutants that display aberrant mitochondrial distribution at restrictive conditions. The analysis of these mutants has uncovered several novel proteins that are localized either to cytoskeletal structures or to the mitochondria themselves. M any mitochondrial inheritance mutants also show altered mitochondrial morphology and defects in maintenance of the mitochondrial genome. Alt hough some inheritance components and mechanisms appear to function sp ecifically in certain types of cells, other conserved proteins are lik ely to mediate mitochondrial behavior in all eukaryotic cells.