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Cover The mechanism of mammalian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) replication has recently been a point of controversy. Shown here is a stylized image of a replicating mammalian mtDNA molecule obtained by atomic force microscopy. This particular form is known as a gapped circle and is one of several structures indicating that mtDNA replicates asymmetrically in a strand-displacement fashion. The single-stranded area of this genome is bound and wrapped with Escherichia coli single-stranded binding protein (turquoise). Together with new evidence for alternative light-strand origins, a coherent model is proposed that accounts for apparent discrepancies between historical and recent data. (For details, see Brown et al., p. 2466.)