I have this excerpt of text from a scientific paper:
... such as mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA; maternally inherited) or non-recombining regions of Y-chromosomal DNA (paternally inherited), ...
Where I want to specify the inheritance of the two types of DNA I mention, but I also need to clarify the abbreviation of mitochondrial DNA to mtDNA as it is it's first mention within the text.
Is there a standard, grammatically correct way of separating 'mtDNA' and 'maternally inherited' in the parenthesis? I have tentatively settled on:
(mtDNA; maternally inherited)
But I'm not sure if this (or indeed any other way) would be preferred:
(mtDNA, maternally inherited)