It might also help explain why individuals with POLG variants tend to be at higher risk of hypertension.

Whether that factor was mtDNA itself remains to be seen, but this observation might help us understand how a small number of cells with impaired mtDNA replication can have outsized effects on a whole tissue.

We studied four #POLG variants that caused varying degrees of #mtDNA depletion. Our key observation is that even when mtDNA loss is minimal, the over-expressed variants caused smooth muscle cells and HeLa cells to secrete a mitogenic (inflammatory?) factor.