Trial and error: how the unclonable human mitochondrial genome was cloned in yeast.

Purpose Development of a human mitochondrial gene deliveryvector is a critical step in the ability to treat diseases arising from mutations in mitochondrial DNA. Although we have previously cloned the mouse mitochondrial genome in its entirety and developed it as a mitochondrial gene therapy vector, the human mitochondrial genome has been dubbed unclonable in E. coli, due to regions of instability in the D-loopand tRNAThr gene.