This book is a new addition to the successful Oxford Monographs on Medical Genetics series, providing a comprehensive review of the area of mitochondrial genetics. Most of the energy produced in cells comes from a compartment called mitochondria. These power houses contain a small piece of DNA (mitochondrial DNA), which is essential for energy production. Since the late 1980s it has been known that mutations in mitochondrial DNA cause disease. The book reviews
progress in understanding these diseases made over the past decade and a half.