111–120 of 412 posts
The fact that every child on the planet is religiously taught that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell is all the evidence I need that we're upholding a primordial contractual agreement and these are the conditions to which we are beholden. Name a single biological entity that has a better PR department. The only one that comes close is Athlete's Foot, which makes the victim sound cool.
"Alive" is a fuzzy boundary in concept space that helps humans navigate a fractally complex world. It's not a fact about mitochondria that either hides or reveals structure. We can harness the potential of viruses, and reasonable people can disagree on whether they are alive.
Interesting argument > control bioenergetics across the eukaryotic tree of life. What types of outcomes do we unlock when we can control bioenergetics?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> long as they can perform the necessary chemical reactions That mitochondria are conserved as an independent organelle across almost [1] all eukaryotes, across billions of years of history, suggests this is something the nuclear can’t easily in house. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6343361/
Maybe! That could also suggest that any other strategies were just out competed by this one and lost the opportunity to develop further.
Absolutely. It also means--however--that any niche where alternative did exist, when exposed to mitochondrial life, they lost.
Now that I think about it, it would be pretty funny if we're this universe's cheela [1], a freakishly overclocked biosphere that runs faster not because it had to but because it happened to.
The fact that every child on the planet is religiously taught that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell is all the evidence I need that we're upholding a primordial contractual agreement and these are the conditions to which we are beholden. Name a single biological entity that has a better PR department. The only one that comes close is Athlete's Foot, which makes the victim sound cool.
As far as I’m aware we’ve never worshipped mitochondria. And unless you want to count eating which is technically true but not philosophically so, we don’t sacrifice plants or animals to mitochondria.
The fact that every child on the planet is religiously taught that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell is all the evidence I need that we're upholding a primordial contractual agreement and these are the conditions to which we are beholden. Name a single biological entity that has a better PR department. The only one that comes close is Athlete's Foot, which makes the victim sound cool.
I actually never heard the phrase until I got online and saw the meme! My biology classes did have us gene editing bacteria to chance its color. That was fun! > The only one that comes close is Athlete's Foot, which makes the victim sound cool. The best cure for athletes foot is a 30 minute soak in diluted bleach. Get a wash basin, fill it with warm water, and add enough bleach so that it tingles a little bit. Do thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we're in agreement then -- this article is not about "did mitochondria evolve from absorbed viable organisms as opposed to evolving directly", which is an interesting question that impacts our understanding of evolution in microbiology. The article is about whether "Microchondria Are Alive" which is a useless naval-gaze.
I dunno if I agree it's a total navel gaze. For example I could easily see a scientist asking the question, "if mitochrondira are not alive, at which point did the phagocytosis of the initial prokaryotic cell lead to the mitochondria not being alive?" "What components were lost in the cell that lead to the loss of life?" I agree these aren't particularly useful, and are ultimately definitional, but definitions matter…
The question in the abstract is not really useful except to answer trick questions in bar trivia.
Mitochondria are why I’m a Rare Earther. In Earth’s history, mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred once. Without that you don’t have the energy budget for complex life. Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been. Until mitochondria, the emergence of l…
I may be wrong, but I recall reading recently it had been found the same event had occurred again, fairly recently (hundreds of thousands of years, could be millions) in some species of bacteria or something like that. Here's a thought, also; maybe once this has happened, it tends to crowd out needing to happen again.
Would love to know the source if you have it.
The fact that every child on the planet is religiously taught that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell is all the evidence I need that we're upholding a primordial contractual agreement and these are the conditions to which we are beholden. Name a single biological entity that has a better PR department. The only one that comes close is Athlete's Foot, which makes the victim sound cool.