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Open access, freely available online Synopses of Research Articles Casting Doubt on the Role of Mitochondria in Tumorigenesis DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020373 Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been intensively studied over the past two decades, and point mutations, more commonly known as deletions, of this DNA are known to be involved in several syndromes. Unlike nuclear DNA, with 46 chromosomes, half from each parent, mtDNA is just one piece of genome of which there are many copies, but all copies come only from the mother. Mitochondrial disease syndromes, such as MELAS, have a range of different clinical manifestations depending on how many copies of the abnormal mtDNA are present in affected cells. There are several international resources of mtDNA sequences. From these sequences, it has been possible to show that different population groups have different patterns of substitutions in the mtDNA—so-called haplogroups; this information has been used, for example, in the investigation of the origin and migration patterns of human populations, and some investigators have DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020373.g001 even suggested that it could be used to trace back to earliest The Role of Mitochondria in Tumorigenesis is not yet clear human history the founding mothers of humanity. More recently, however, attention has turned to the question of whether mtDNA is involved in tumor formation. However, the result of such sequencing “disasters” is that fl awed results are not fi ltered out from the clinical literature, which makes the deciding whether mutations are harmful or innocuous has been diffi cult. One concern is that isolation of mtDNA from any task of interpreting