A new paper by Kajander et al. undermines the general view that mitochondri
a do not recombine. The authors discovered the existence of 'sublimons', re
arranged mitochondrial genomes present at very low levels in healthy human
patients. Crucially, the different rearranged mitochondrial genomes can the
oretically be interconverted through intramitochondrial recombination. The
putative operation of intramitochondrial recombination should impact on our
ideas of how mitochondrial genes evolve, particularly with respect to how
mitochondrial genomes rearrange.