Any time I read a mitochondria post like this, I strongly recommend that others who find the topic interesting check out Power, Sex, and Suicide by Nick Lane. Excellent book!
Came here to recommend Power, Sex, and Suicide. It is a fascinating book.
Mitochondria Are Alive
131–140 of 412 posts
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#132Earlier 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/
There are organisms without mitochondria too though. So it’s viable.
> are organisms without mitochondria too though. So it’s viable.
True, it's an anaerobic ersatz cnidarian [1] that may be an escaped cancer [2].
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#133Mitochondria 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…
So only a few billion planets with complex life?
> only a few billion planets with complex life?
Or trillions or tens or ones. Depends on what number you put in the exponent. Currently, we don't have useful constraints on that figure.
(A lot of popular astrobiology pulls the "if we could only get 1% of the market we'd be billionaires" schtick.)
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#134Any time I read a mitochondria post like this, I strongly recommend that others who find the topic interesting check out Power, Sex, and Suicide by Nick Lane. Excellent book!
The Vital Question covers this topic and is in general a really great basic education in biological energy production.
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#135Here is an animation of the Mitochondria in action.
The mitochondria has two cell membranes. The gap in between is called the intermembrane space. It is also positively charged with protons. There are complexes 1-4 which continuously pump protons into this space. The ATP synthase molecule harnesses these protons, similar to a water wheel harnessing the flow of water, to make ATP which is the energy molecule the cell uses.
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#136Mitochondria 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…
Mitochondria seems to have been an 'accident', yes. That does not mean that other lifeforms in different planets require mitochondria or equivalent organelles. As long as they can perform the necessary chemical reactions (which could be different in a different environments) and extract enough energy, they should be good. How did mitochondria evolve in the first place? Could they have remained as independent organism…
It’s so pathetic to keep hearing that dna is an accident , life is an accident, mitochondria is an accident. What is an accident that natures says “oooops”. When will we take our heads out of the sand and realize the universe is alive and creating everything. There are no goddamn accidents !!!!
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are organisms without mitochondria too though. So it’s viable.
> are organisms without mitochondria too though. So it’s viable. True, it's an anaerobic ersatz cnidarian [1] that may be an escaped cancer [2]. [1] https://daily.jstor.org/who-needs-mitochondria-anyway/ [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6343361/
> [discovered in] gut bacteria from a researcher’s pet chinchilla
wow. we could be surrounded by so many extraordinary organisms and not even know it because there's so much variety just in our own backyards
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#138Mitochondria 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…
Chloroplasts also evolved from separate organisms and are now effectively organelles. So this is t a one off event.
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#139Mitochondria 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…
Like other gradients (heat, pressure, chemical) it might seem rare, the gradient guides its occurrence. A power efficiency gradient was going to happen eventually, accident or otherwise.
Re: Mitochondria Are Alive
#140It's such highly unlikely chance events that make me think we really are alone in the universe (we = a sentient civilizational lifeform). There's just no way the long series of extremely improbable events that led to our rise was replicated anywhere else, and it took the sheer vastness of this universe for it to have emerged even once.
There is ~1M bacteria in a single drop of seawater. Now multiply that by (the ocean) and multiply the interactions by X billion years. It seems impossible for a symbiosis like this not to have happened . No matter how low the odds are, the counts of those potential interactions bring this outcome to a certainty.
Each grain of sand on earth represents 1 billion planets in the universe.
https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/1af4prs/if_you_w...