TFAM and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: Importantly, TFAM levels are known to directly control mtDNA copy number (Larsson et al, 1998; Matsushima et al, 2003; Ekstrand et al, 2004; Kanki et al, 2004) and multiple in vivo studies have shown that TFAM overexpression is beneficial in mouse models with various types of pathology, for example, myocardial infarction, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, transient forebrain ischemia and age-dependent memory loss (Ikeuchi et al, 2005; Hayashi et al, 2008; Hokari et al, 2010; Morimoto et al, 2012).