Practice question

Mitochondrial DNA resides in the mitochondrial genome, inherited almost exclusively through maternal lineage because sperm mitochondria are generally eliminated after fertilization and degraded in the zygote. It evolves independently of nuclear genome, shows uniparental transmission, haploidy and lack of recombination, making it valuable for phylogeography, maternal lineage tracing and evolutionary studies. Nuclear markers such as SSR, STR and SNP follow biparental Mendelian inheritance, representing both parents. Maternal inheritance provides unique information about population bottlenecks and historical migration via female ancestors.