Figure 2.

The most frequent deletion breakpoints occur within or near predicted hairpins. Five of the most frequent breakpoint sites (mtDNA positions 3263, 5787, 12 300, 13 447 and 16 071) are indicated by a green arrow in the predicted structure (L-strand) of the 100-nt flanking region (breakpoints were used as window midpoints). The blue and red arrows indicate less frequent 5′- and 3′-breakpoints, respectively. Highlighted in grey are the binding sites of the MTERF1, the 13-nt direct repeat at the 3′-breakpoint of the ‘common deletion’ and the D-loop 3′-terminus.