Nucleotide Sequence Variation in Mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleic Acid from Bovine Liver

Mitochondrial .deoxyribonucleic acid isolated from the liver of pedigreed cows was examined by restriction enzyme analysis. Differences in restriction enzyme patterns of deoxyribonucleic acid from different maternal lineages were observed. These nucleotide sequence differences were scattered over the mitochondrial genome, with some clustering near the origin of deoxyribonucleic acid replication. Most of them appeared to result from the simple loss or gain of a restriction enzyme site and did not appear to involve gross rearrangements of the mitochondrial genome.