Mitochondrial Short-Term Plastic Responses and Long-Term Evolutionary Dynamics in Animal Species

Abstract

How do species respond or adapt to environmental changes? The answer to this depends partly on mitochondrial epigenetics and genetics, new players in promoting adaptation to both short- and long-term environmental changes. In this review, we explore how mitochondrial epigenetics and genetics mechanisms, such as mtDNA methylation, mtDNA-derived noncoding RNAs, micropeptides, mtDNA mutations, and adaptations, can contribute to animal plasticity and adaptation. We also briefly discuss the challenges in assessing mtDNA adaptive evolution. In sum, this review covers new advances in the field of mitochondrial genomics, many of which are still controversial, and discusses processes still somewhat obscure, and some of which are still quite speculative and require further robust experimentation.

Keywords: adaptation; mitochondria; mitochondrial DNA; mitochondrial epigenetics; mitochondrial mutations; plasticity.