Mitochondria Gone Bad. It's Mums' fault !

[Michaelangelica]

Quite a long, intersting, easy-to-read article on the subject. It looks like researchers are having a new look at these "wee beasties" that have hitched a ride with us

Mitochondria Gone Bad

Today, scientists suspect that millions of people may be suffering from mitochondria gone awry, in more subtle but nonetheless insidious forms. Evidence suggests that malfunctioning mitochondria could explain Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and other consequences of aging.

Given the organelle’s core function in the body, some think mitochondria might even be the biological epicenter of aging itself: If you live long enough, all your cells might experience a kind of energy crisis.

“I strongly believe that mitochondrial metabolism is the key to aging,” says Hemachandra Reddy of Oregon Health & Science University in Beaverton.

 

Even before scientists suspected a role in common diseases, mitochondria had some biological celebrity. The sometimes tubular, sometimes bean-shaped structures are remnants of an ancient bacterium captured by a one-celled organism more than a billion years ago, experts believe.

In animal cells, mitochondria are the only cellular components outside the nucleus that boast their own DNA, which is passed on from mother to child almost in its entirety. Douglas Wallace of the University of California, Irvine, a self-described “mitochondriac,” has used variations in mitochondrial DNA to help construct a global human family tree, tracing the migration of ancient humans from Africa.

 

These days, however, Wallace concerns himself with the living.

“All these diseases that no one has been able to solve might be solved by understanding the mitochondria,” he says. This is, he contends, a new way of thinking about illness. “Up until very recently, mitochondria were considered very arcane and certainly not part of mainstream medicine,” he says. Questions about mitochondria were mostly confined to rare brain and muscle syndromes linked to inherited defects in the organelles.

 

In a move that will push mitochondria studies further into the mainstream, this year the National Institutes of Health has put aside grant money to encourage more mitochondria research, hoping to “transform our understanding of the role of this critical organelle in human health and disease,” according to the funding announcement.

Already scientists have found clues that link defects in mitochondria to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, heart failure and other breakdowns in the body that come with age.

 

The price of energy. . .

etc worth reading.

Science News / Mitochondria Gone Bad

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Enlargemagnify

PACKING POWERView Larger Version | Mitochondria are among the small structures called organelles that reside within a cell. Known as the cells’ powerhouses, mitochondria extract energy from fuels such as glucose in the presence of oxygen to produce a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP (green), which provides energy for the cell. In the process, mitochondria generate potentially dangerous free radicals (red).