Mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is only a small portion of the DNA in a eukaryotic cell; most of the DNA can be found in the cell nucleus and, in plants and algae, also in plastids such as chloroplasts. In humans, the 16,569 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA encode for only 37 genes. Human mitochondrial DNA was the first significant part of the human genome to be sequenced. In
DNA methylation in cancer lung cancers or non-small-cell lung cancer squamous cell carcinomas. The article Werner syndrome ATP-dependent helicase indicates the DNA repair gene "WRN" has a promoter that is frequently hypermethylated in a number of cancers, with hypermethylation occurring in 11% to 38% of colorectal, head and neck, stomach, prostate, breast, thyroid, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, chondrosarcoma and osteosarcoma cancers (see WRN). As discussed by Jin and Roberston in their review, silencing of a DNA repair gene by hypermethylation may be a very early step in progression to cancer. Such silencing is proposed to act similarly to a germ-line mutation in a DNA repair gene,