Digital Commons Network^™

Consequences Of Endogenous Mitochondrial Oxidative Stress In The Heart, Kristin Alisha Koenig

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

For many years, it has been proposed that oxidative stress within the mitochondria causes mutations to the mitochondrial genome, resulting in changes in copy number per single cell. Ultimately, this compensatory increase in mtDNA, coupled with an increase in mutations, has been suggested to play a major role in the pathobiology of aging. However, evidence for this phenomenon is somewhat controversial. Importantly, oxidative stress can vary between individual cells; therefore, the overall goal of this project is to determine if oxidative stress causes both an altered copy number for mtDNA in singlecardiomyocytes and develop a methodology for sequencing mtDNA from …