One Mitochondrial Mutation, Three Reported Disease States: Reading the MELAS Heteroplasmy Ladder

A reading of the MELAS heteroplasmy ladder for the mitochondrial m.3243A>G mutation. Two readings of the same ladder: an information-dynamics reading that treats the mutant fraction as a loss of projection purity and the tissue threshold as mtDNA copy number per cell, with three testable shape predictions; and a traditional Chinese medicine reading that treats the ladder as a seesaw of sovereign fire (jun huo) and ministerial fire (xiang huo), presented as a non-empirical analogy. No new data are reported. The code that draws Figure 1 from the cited papers' numbers is included as a supplement.