Allotopic expression (AE) refers to expression from the nuclear genome of genes that normally are expressed only from the mitochondrial genome. Biomedically engineered AE has been suggested as a possible future tool in gene therapy of certain mitochondria-related diseases (de Grey 2000), however this view is controversial (Oca-Cossio et al 2003).
References
de Grey, Aubrey D. N. J. (2000): Mitochondrial gene therapy: an arena for the biomedical use of inteins. Trends in Biotechnology18(9): 394-399 doi:10.1016/S0167-7799(00)01476-1 (HTML abstract)
Oca-Cossio et al, Limitations of allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes in mammalian cells. Genetics. 2003 Oct;165(2):707-20[1] (abstract & full article)
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