[HN Gopher] Mitochondria Are More Than Powerhouses-They're the M...
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Mitochondria Are More Than Powerhouses-They're the Motherboard of
the Cell
Author : novia
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-05-21 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| mdp2021 wrote:
| In case of interest, maybe also see its related
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44052898
|
| https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-map-of-energy-in-the-brain
|
| Edit: I see that the other submission is marked as a "dupe": it
| is not - a shorter introduction to the article in Nature. The
| submission of this page is the narrative presentation from a main
| researcher.
|
| Edit2: though of course if we wanted to consider a submission as
| "news" instead of "content", then the two submissions are
| related. Dang, maybe we could think of an HN feature where linked
| submissions are somehow grouped?
| pvg wrote:
| https://archive.is/OiSlu
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Also there's recent research on cells exchanging mitochondria[1]
| which is pretty surprising.
|
| 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01064-5
| matznerd wrote:
| There is a reason that longevists, longevity researchers, and
| biohackers focus on mitochondrial enhancement through various
| means, supplementing NAD/NR, Ubiquinol, PQQ, ALCAR,
| photobiomodulation, etc
|
| "Your eyes transform light into electrical impulses that coalesce
| into an image in your visual field, and your ears transform air-
| pressure waves into electrical pulses that you eventually
| perceive as sounds. Likewise, mitochondria transform dozens of
| hormonal, metabolic, chemical, and other information streams into
| their electrical membrane potential. This "bioenergetic" state
| then leads to the production of secondary messenger molecules
| that are intelligible to the nucleus. So in the same way you read
| messages on your phone, which receives signals, transforms them
| and projects decipherable information onto its screen, the
| nucleus of your cells can "read" the environment through the MIPS
| that surrounds it. Rather than having supplementary roles like
| those of battery chargers, mitochondria are more like the
| motherboard of the cell. Genes sit inert in the nucleus until
| energy and the right message come along to turn some of them on
| and some others off. Mitochondria provide these messages,
| speaking the language of the epigenome--the malleable layer of
| regulation that sits on top of the genome to regulate its
| expression.
|
| My colleague Timothy Shutt of the University of Calgary likes to
| call mitochondria the "CEO of the cell": the chief executive
| organelle. This metaphor captures how mitochondria not only are
| involved in integrating information but also give orders. They
| dictate whether the cell divides, differentiates or dies. Indeed,
| mitochondria have a veto on cell life or death. If the MIPS deems
| it necessary, it triggers programmed cell death, or apoptosis--a
| form of self-sacrifice for the greater good of the organism.
|
| So vital are mitochondria that in difficult times cells may
| donate entire mitochondria to other cells. "In cellular
| emergencies, newly arrived mitochondria might kick-start tissue
| repair, fire up the immune system or rescue distressed cells from
| death," journalist Gemma Conroy noted in a Nature news story last
| April. Inside tumors, cancer cells and immune cells appear to
| compete for mitochondria, using them as a kind of bioweapon. An
| international effort I participated in, led by Jonathan R.
| Brestoff of the Washington University School of Medicine in St.
| Louis, recently created an entirely new lexicon to guide the
| emerging field of mitochondria transfer and transplantation. All
| well and good, you may think. What does all this mean for my
| health or how long I'm going to live?
|
| The short answer is that it may have everything to do with human
| health. Diabetes, neurodegenerative conditions, cancer and even
| mental health illnesses are all emerging as metabolic disorders
| involving malfunctioning mitochondria. And these findings are
| indicating new routes for intervention.
|
| Mitochondria drive health--or disease--in several ways. One route
| derives from their role as energy processors. In an electrical
| circuit, if we crank up the input voltage too much, we can blow
| it out. Similarly, if our cells are exposed to too much glucose
| or fat--or, worse, both together, causing what doctors refer to
| as glucolipotoxicity--the mitochondria undergo fission and
| fragment into little bits, accumulate mtDNA defects, and produce
| signals that end up prematurely aging or killing the cell.
| Experiments in cells and in mice have shown that
| pharmacologically or genetically preventing mitochondrial fission
| induced by excessive glucose and fats may protect against insulin
| resistance. Cancer, too, may be a disorder of cellular
| metabolism. Cancer cells can burn glucose without oxygen, which
| suggests either that something is wrong with their mitochondria
| or that they prefer to reserve mitochondria for use in cell
| division--and proliferation.
|
| A second pathway is through mitochondria's influence on gene
| expression. Mitochondrial signals alter the expression of more
| than 66 percent of genes in the nuclear chromosomes. By changing
| which genes are expressed and to what extent, mutations in mtDNA
| may completely alter the nature, behavior and stress resilience
| of cells and ultimately of the whole organism."
| givinguflac wrote:
| Fascinating.
|
| This may be relevant- I was just reading another article about
| migratory bird mitochondrial transition when migrating or not.
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/turbocharged-mitochondria-pow...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some discussion on that one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44051652
| DFHippie wrote:
| There is all this variety in their behavior, shape, and influence
| on our biology, yet they have only 37 genes? How many nuclear
| genes augment these 37 to make all of this possible? Do any of
| these genes encode for the ribosome proteins necessary to convert
| the remaining genes into proteins?
|
| What guides the behavior of a mitochondrion utterly lacking
| mtDNA? I suppose they still contain the proteins these genes code
| for, so maybe the genes are needed only for repair and
| reproduction.
| aeblyve wrote:
| The genome of the rice plant is about 1.5x-2x the size of a
| human one.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| If you like Mitochondria stuff, This book about the Krebs cycle
| and how it was discovered is pretty good: https://nick-
| lane.net/books/transformer-the-deep-chemistry-o...
|
| The short answer is: First you have to murder a pigeon to extract
| fresh breast muscle cells. Then you put those cells in a
| manometer which uses columns of water to measure respiration via
| tiny changes in gas volume. From there you can add various things
| like citric acid and see how that affects respiration.
|
| So figuring out mitochondria required murdering a large number of
| pigeons. Their breast muscles have some of the highest rates of
| respiration known, many times better then ours.
|
| Reading this book inspired me to attempt to improve my
| mitochondrial health. So far the only stuff that seems to make a
| difference is NAD+ and Creatine.
| analog31 wrote:
| How did you measure your mitochondrial health, short of
| extracting fresh breast muscle cells and putting them in a
| manometer?
| exe34 wrote:
| That's the clever bit - you extract them from pigeons
| instead!
| astrange wrote:
| Personally I inherited a mitochondria disease (LHON), so I'll
| be able to tell if mine becomes bad because I'll go blind.
|
| Can't recommend you do this though.
| sergeym wrote:
| have you tried zone-2 training?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6PDBVRkCKc
| DonHopkins wrote:
| > First you have to murder a pigeon to extract fresh breast
| muscle cells.
|
| Tom Lehrer would approve!
|
| "We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment, except for
| the few we take home to experiment."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| You've cursed me to play the countries of the world song in
| my head all day, again.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| +1
|
| Also supplementing with NAD+ and creatine for this reason. I
| also do PQQ and CoQ10 to de-bottleneck other phases of the
| Krebs.
| whycome wrote:
| "Endosymbiosis" always seemed so ...eukaryocentric.
| aeblyve wrote:
| Really enjoy this perspective. Mitochondria must be the true
| biological individuals, and the cells are just their "houses".
|
| Otto Warburg wrote about the bioenergetics of cancer cells as
| favoring fermentation over respiration.
| neosat wrote:
| This metaphor may be misleading. For a compelling alternate view,
| read the excellent: "Is the cell really a machine?"
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00225...
|
| From the article:
|
| "It has become customary to conceptualize the living cell as an
| intricate piece of machinery, different to a man-made machine
| only in terms of its superior complexity ......"
|
| " ..... However, the recent introduction of novel experimental
| techniques capable of tracking individual molecules within cells
| in real time is leading to the rapid accumulation of data that
| are inconsistent with an engineering view of the cell ......
| which emphasizes the dynamic, self-organizing nature of its
| constitution, the fluidity and plasticity of its components, and
| the stochasticity and non-linearity of its underlying processes."
| daemonk wrote:
| Learning biology is a great insight to how humans think about
| complex systems. We tend to utilize a reductionist and
| engineering approach to figure out how things work. This is a
| perfectly valid approach when building up a complex system from
| knowable individual parts.
|
| But when analyzing a complex biological system, we tend to make
| analogies to our own engineered components (motherboards, power
| sources, circuits). There are definitely a lot of similarities
| and it is a great way to understand one facet of the system. But
| it can also sometimes make us lose sight of the intertwining
| relationships among all of these parts through evolution.
|
| The analogy of our genome to an informational blueprint is one of
| the best examples of the multi-faceted nature of biology. While
| the sequence of bases contained within DNA (primary structure) is
| informational, the complex structures the molecule itself
| (chromatin structure) also have mechanistic purposes.
|
| We build engineered components to be controllable and independent
| so we can better assess how the system is working. However, that
| is not an explicit goal with biology. Biological "components"
| settle into the best form for the given environment over time
| even if it creates a potential "mess" of connections and
| relationships.
|
| I think this is also why biology takes a long time to "sink in"
| while learning compared to other technical fields. It's very easy
| to over-train your mental biological model on one facet of the
| system and lose sight of the others.
|
| It is not uncommon to see the same terminology used in very
| different ways in various sub-fields of biology. Gene Ontology is
| also a great example of this as people have found there are
| biases associated with what the originator lab is studying at the
| time. Genes with pleiotropic function will tend to get assigned
| function that's more relevant to what the lab is interested in.
|
| Sometimes I wonder if we are really equipped to navigate it and
| understand it. Maybe AI/computation is really the only way to try
| to have a holistic view of the complexities. Perhaps trying to
| understand biology with our biological brain has inherent
| limitations like a piece of software trying to understand the
| hardware it resides in.
| christopherscot wrote:
| > Sometimes I wonder if we are really equipped to navigate it
| and understand it. Maybe AI/computation is really the only way
| to try to have a holistic view of the complexities. Perhaps
| trying to understand biology with our biological brain has
| inherent limitations like a piece of software trying to
| understand the hardware it resides in.
|
| This is a fascinating thought.
| spudlyo wrote:
| I feel like the field of metabolic psychiatry is a very promising
| one. I can say from personal experience that switching to a
| ketogenic diet along with regular monitoring my blood ketone
| levels has had a huge impact on my ADHD related doldrums. Over
| the past two years it has helped me with the motivation and drive
| to lose weight, consistently exercise, and made it easier to
| create new habits which seem to have stuck. It seems strange that
| simply (although radically) altering your diet can lead to a life
| changing virtuous circle, but that's been my experience.
| aeblyve wrote:
| I don't know if you've read Brain Energy by Chris Palmer MD,
| but you'd probably really like it as a scientific confirmation
| of what you have experienced.
|
| I used to be ketogenic, but ultimately moved to consuming more
| simple sugar from fruit juice etc per Ray Peat.
| astrange wrote:
| Note: Ray Peat is a crazy person who Twitter bro-science
| picked up, the kind of guys who were previously into keto and
| supplements that don't do anything.
|
| They're similar in that they love saturated fat and red meat,
| and think vegetable oils are bad, but he also wants you to
| eat ice cream and sugar.
|
| The ice cream part is possibly correct:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-
| cre...
| aeblyve wrote:
| More-or-less, I guess. The methods work well for my feeling
| good and functioning well. e.g., no more migraines, reduced
| intensity of springtime allergies, more energy, better
| resistance to stress, etc.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| There's a very, very low chance that consuming fruit juice
| will improve health.
|
| Consuming fruit, sure.
|
| Juice goes (almost) straight to the bloodstream and messes up
| an entire range of things (digestion, liver, glycation stuff,
| etc).
| aeblyve wrote:
| This is a belief that I held for years, leading me to avoid
| all of that stuff, yet increasing juice intake has been
| very helpful for feeling good and functioning well.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "you'd probably really like it as a scientific confirmation
| of what you have experienced."
|
| So, bias confirmation? That is the opposite of scientific.
| aeblyve wrote:
| I did use the bad word "confirmation", but I don't think
| it's harmful to look at scientific dialogue which aligns
| with what one experiences so as to understand that
| experience better, from new perspectives, find caveats,
| etc.
|
| If we believe that our personal experiences can be an
| ingredient of real knowledge about the world, etc
| skeaker wrote:
| Seems a bit circular, no? Going on a diet to get the motivation
| to go on a diet. I'd wager a large part of your behavioral
| change was that you had already changed your behavior to get to
| that point.
| spudlyo wrote:
| To be fair, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it all
| if I didn't start out by eliminating work-related stress,
| which gave me some bandwidth to attempt something difficult.
| That was the first step in the flywheel, followed by diet,
| sleep prioritization, exercise, social connections, and
| structure/routine.
| chneu wrote:
| For others: most people don't need to go full keto. Just
| reducing sugars in general helps a lot of people. Refined
| sugars especially.
|
| I also have ADHD and caffeine/sugar make my symptoms way worse.
| If I abstain from caffeine the difference is huge.
|
| Alcohol is also something that really screws with ADHD. One
| drink can have weeks of effects.
| aeblyve wrote:
| I think you might want to look into supplementing vitamin B1.
| In my personal experience sugar is not in itself the problem,
| but an impaired ability to process, or utilize, sugar can be.
| Many caffeinated beverages contain B1-inactivating tannins
| (tea, coffee), and consuming caffeine on an empty stomach,
| when blood sugar is already low, can cause mild deprivation
| of nerve tissues leading to impaired functioning.
|
| Alcohol famously disrupts the metabolism of B1, making it
| ineffective in the body. In the extreme case it causes the
| Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome which is exactly related to B1
| metabolism.
|
| The "insulinergic" role of potassium and so on in fruit
| juices also does make them easier to process in this way than
| something like coca cola.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Ymmv but I think the key here is the "virtuous cycle" bit, not
| the diet. When you gain control over a facet of your life and
| establish healthy habits, its bound to A) lead to more healthy
| habuts and B) lead to better mental/psychological hygene which
| is directly correlated wigh reduced adhd symptoms.
| aeblyve wrote:
| Ray Peat PhD (RIP) and Chris Palmer MD have both emphasized the
| role of bioenergetics in human functioning, especially brain
| functioning.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Metaphor taken way too far...
|
| Who is the superIO chipset of the cell? Who are the VRMs?
| anticensor wrote:
| SuperIO is the pores and ports system on the cellular membrane.
| Mitochondria are self-regulating (hence it's its own VRM),
| subject to added external control signals by hormonal
| receptors. And the nucleus is the tape drive.
| koeng wrote:
| Eukaryogenesis is a fascinating topic, and "motherboard" doesn't
| do it justice.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I learned some new concepts from this post. You are hereby
| granted one hyper-upvote.
| ag_rin wrote:
| This is a super interesting set of thoughts. Do you have any
| further reading that helped form this conclusion or is your
| intuition just that cool.
| smj-edison wrote:
| This article reminds me of something my psychiatrist said: "cells
| are typically classified by the role they perform, but I think
| it's better to classify them based on the type of mitochondria
| they have." Especially as it talked about the different
| mitochondria in neurons.
| profsummergig wrote:
| Fascinating article. Learned a lot. Especially about Lynn
| Margulis. What a great scientist. And she married Carl Sagan to
| boot.
|
| Here's the part I don't understand about Mitochondria.
|
| - I have a love-hate relationship with alcohol. I love it, it
| hates me. Turns out that alcohol really messes with mitochondria.
| And could be blamed for the inflammation and obesity epidemic
| (via mitochondrial disregulation).
|
| - But then I see pics of people at beaches and public squares in
| the 60's and 70's. They were drinking way more than we do now.
| And they look skinny as heck. (As heck!)
|
| - And apparently, for hundreds (thousands?) of years in various
| parts of the world (especially the West), people pretty much
| drank water mixed with alcohol all day (to kill the germs), and
| their food was a type of highly viscous beer (fermented liquified
| bread).
|
| - So it can't be all that simple now, can it?
| peakskill wrote:
| The story of mitochondria is one of input mismatches. You get no
| UV, yet are warm. You see blue light, yet it's night time. It's
| day time, yet there is no NIR. You eat CHO heavy meals in the
| winter, yet nothing would grow at that latitude with the limited
| UV yield.
|
| I could go into everything that goes into redox status, non-
| visual opsins, leptin and melanin, pgc1a, DHA, lack of cofactors
| (esp minerals), deuterium, and the list goes on... but nothing
| matters. All you need is to respect nature, wear blue light
| blockers at night, go outside, expose yourself to the elements,
| move, eat what you would have access to given the current UV
| yield, and supplement with tryspike.store's MB-0.1 (due to soil
| depletion).
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