a student claims that if the animal producing the spermatozoa has a mutation in a mitochondrial gene, the probability that an offspring will inherit the mutation is zero. Provide evidence to support this claim

Nuclear DNA is diploid, so the offspring inherits Nuclear DNA from both parents. Whereas, non-nuclear DNA is haploid and the offspring inherits DNA from one parent only. So, Non-nuclear DNA such as mitochondria is inherited uniparentally so the DNA is inherited from only one parent only and not both. The animal producing the spermatozoa is the male, and the offspring will not inherit the mitochondrial gene from the animal producing spermatozoa but will inherit it from the mother. The mother passes the mitochondrial gene, so the offspring are not affected by the mutation in the father's mitochondrial gene as the offspring gets the mitochondrial gene from the mother. There is no chance that the offspring can get the mutated mitochondrial gene of the animal producing spermatozoa as it only gets the mitochondrial gene from the mother, and not the father who produces spermatozoa.

The mitochondrial genome is a haploid genome because it has been scientifically proven that its DNA has an exclusively maternal inheritance. This is due to a mechanism during mitochondrial selectivity fertilization. Thus, the mother transmits to her child her mitochondrial genome, which means that the offspring of the maternal line always have the same genome.

Given this characteristic of uniparental heredity, it is possible to perform reconstruction of evolutionary lines over time, without interfering with the effects of biparental heredity and the inherent recombination of nuclear DNA.