It seems like mitochondria research is going to have a lot of impact over the next decades. For example, apparently some people with fatigue diseases have damaged mitochondria (eg, Dianna Cowern aka ThePhysicsGirl who has had a terrible long COVID illness)
Some longevity researchers could investigate the DNA sequence of the mitochondrial DNA(a discrete object) to see if there is a length of life correlation = CRISPR edit towards longer life. It would be easily explored in mice and then there could be some edits in an egg very soon after fertilisation to replace that mitochondrial DNA in that egg to see the result. Might be a hard task to find/replace all these mitochondria and maintain life? In a single mouse egg = how many are there? A search finds this interesting paper = a good rabbit hole indeed. It is an area of intense research.
<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4684129/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4684129/</a>
Would be interesting if there’s some trigger hormone or other mechanism that triggers turbo mode. It’ll be being used in the Tour de France in no time if so.<p>(FYI I’m not a biologist and have no idea what I’m talking about)
Fun fact: respiration is what really caused eukaryogenesis and the ability for multicellular life to occur. If archaea (what our nuclear genomes are derived from) weren't being kinda weird in the deep ocean, we would never have existed. Bacteria and archaea (other than eukaryote ancestor) have never created multicellular life. And it's because respiration. (cross posting below from my comment on another thread)<p>For efficient respiration, you need to have the translation/transcription of certain ATP synthase genes near to the membrane for basically JIT-ing them when ready to maintain membrane potential, and hence energy generation. Otherwise, the membrane potential falls apart. This simple need is why there are zero multicellular bacteria and multicellularity evolved 6 times in eukaryotes.
By decoupling the rest of the genome from the JIT bits (ie, mitochondrial DNA), you can scale energy independently of genetic information. So if you need 1000x the energy, you need like 5% more DNA (mitochondrial DNA) instead of 1000x more DNA in your genome.<p>Some estimates say that our eukaryotic genes are in charge of 5000x more energy than the equivalent bacterial gene. Hence, our genomes can inflate that much and its fine. And they have. All that inflation lets us have bullshit hang around in our genome, and hey, sometimes evolution figures out something to do with all that bullshit. We evolved 1000x more complexity than bacteria because we decoupled the performance code from the rest of the code.
Related:<p><i>Mitochondria Are More Than Powerhouses–They're the Motherboard of the Cell</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44052909">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44052909</a>
“We were just amazed and interested in how can these birds fly for thousands of miles without stopping, at a really high intensity, when most of us can barely run a 5K"<p>On the one hand, sure, it's interesting, and the article digs in and is interesting in general -- but that phrase feels off and trite, similar to saying "We were amazed that cheetahs can run over 60mph, while most humans can't manage 10mph" or "We were amazed that sperm whales can hold their breath for 90 minutes while most humans can't manage a minute"
It’s interesting how “turbo” has had so much semantic drift that people don’t even know it’s a specific component in an engine. They just think it means “fast”. Wouldn’t be surprised to eventually see a “turbo” trim levels for EVs someday.
One of the interesting findings in the article’s linked paper was that vitamin E is an effective dietary antioxidant (in birds) but only if they do 2 hours of cardio per day.