| Summary: | Mitochondria play important roles in cellular energy metabolism, free radical
generation, and apoptosis. Mitochondrial DNA has been proposed to be involved in
carcinogenesis because of its high susceptibility to mutations and limited repair
mechanisms in comparison to nuclear DNA. Breast cancer is the most frequent
cancer type among women in the world and, although exhaustive research has been
done on nuclear DNA changes, several studies describe a variety of mitochondrial
DNA alterations present in breast cancer. In this review article, we to provide a
summary of the mitochondrial genomic alterations reported in breast cancer and
their functional consequences.
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