[sidewndr46]

While it is a different category that chromosomal DNA, it is still an essential part of mammalian life. None of use would exist in our current forms without mitochondria

[pfdietz]

As I understand it, a human egg has about an equal quantity of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. The mitochondrial DNA is highly replicated, though (about 100,000 mitochondria, each with ~16600 base pairs of DNA).

[burning_hamster]

I was going to call BS on this one, but after crunching some numbers, if anything this is likely an underestimate.

human nuclear genome size (haploid): 3.1 billion bp

mitochondrial genome size: 16 000 bp

1 human nuclear genome per egg -> 3.1 billion bp nuclear DNA

100 000 mitochondria, each with 1-10 genomes per mitochondrion [1] -> 1.6-16 billion bp mitochondrial DNA

So the ratio of mitochondrial to nuclear DNA in human eggs is on the order of 0.5 to 5.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4988970/

[pfdietz]

Thank you for the tidbit that mitochondria each may have multiple copies of that genome.