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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#201

Post by JumpCrisscross »

aydyn wrote: post #198
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is possible it happened other times but those lineages were out-competed, for whatever reasons, and are now extinct Chlorophyll probably outcompeted retinal [1]. (The stuff in our eyes.) The reduced form of my claim is that mitochondrial life so freakishly outcompetes its competitors as to be in a class of its own. Which still yields a rare Earth, albeit a first among many. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purp…

Does it yield a rare Earth? If we didn't have mitochondria and had something say 20% less efficient, why couldn't multicellular life still exist?

> why couldn't multicellular life still exist?

We don't know the fundamental energy requirements of complex life. The threshold may be 2%. It may be 19.995%. If non-mitochondrial metabolism is common, the Earth would still be rare in that we'd be the "fast" biosphere. The high-octane species. Given how power-intensive intelligence is, that might be material. (Or it might not.)

More fundamentally: we have no plausible alternate chemistries that don't bootstrap on mitochondrial life. (We do for photosynthesis.)

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#202

Post by jpk »

tim333 wrote: post #188
liyamchitayat wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

I just tried that and it said: >Yes, mitochondria are alive, though they are not considered "living" in the same way as a cell because they can't function independently... Maybe it's learning!

Or maybe the temperature is set too high! Probably don't start with a single LLM response as the basis for your understanding of scientific consensus.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#203

Post by HaZeust »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #71

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.

>"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."

Love this line! Phoenix Worm came to mind.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#204

Post by satvikpendem »

liyamchitayat wrote: post #185
meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

I am not sure you should be relying on an LLM as any indication of anything...

More seriously, considering something as being alive in order to engineer them better does not necessarily change the fact of them actually being alive or not, in my opinion.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#205

Post by jjk166 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

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…

This process, known as primary endosymbiosis, happened at least twice, for mitochondria and chloroplasts. Further, while all chloroplasts (and more widely plastids) appear to share a common ancestor, there is evidence that mitochondria may descend from multiple lineages that underwent lateral gene transfer and/or convergent evolution. Nitroplasts are a likely another, separate instance of primary endosymbiosis.

There is also secondary endosymbiosis, where the endosymbiont organelles of one eukaryote are engulfed and incorporated into another eukaryotic cell to create a new type of endosymbiont. This has happened at least 8 times.

There are also theories that some other organelles are the product of other endosymbiosis events, many of which also have some of the hallmarks like their own genetic material. These theories are more speculative though.

It's also worth noting that while eukaryotes obviously gained some important capabilities from incorporating these endosymbionts, the endosymbionts they incorporated obviously managed to just evolve to perform those functions directly. Further, while one of eukaryotes' distinguishing features are mitochondria, there are several other major differences, and mitochondria are not believed to be what made eukaryotes better able to evolve complex multicellularity. Prokaryotes have indeed evolved multicellularity dozens of times, and we arbitrarily set our definition of complex multicellularity to distinguish from what prokaryotes have achieved.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#206

Post by sroussey »

meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

Mitochondria are weird. Look at 3-parent baby (human).

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#208

Post by liyamchitayat »

hurpdurpdurp wrote: post #103
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

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 know nothing about biology, pardon my ignorance. From the article it sounds like mitochondria were a separate organism that has perhaps simplified through specialization and is currently on the boundary of being an independent life form. It also sounds like there are other structures (golgi apparatus are mentioned?) which are not on the bubble. Are we sure that there is not an arrow of time here, where once those o…

Hi! thanks for taking time to read :)

Those other membrane bubbles inside out cells don't have any of the machines we expect to be associated with cellular life- but you never actually know!

Also, this is def not a 1-off, and happened many times, including chloroplasts in this new nitroplast we found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroplast

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#209

Post by JumpCrisscross »

liyamchitayat wrote: post #185
meneton wrote: post #179

This article is framed as if there is something novel and profound here, but the "aliveness" of mitochondria is simply a matter of how we choose to apply the label "life" - a human linguistic construct that exists independently of the biological phenomena. This is not a new discussion - science has been considering this question for many decades, just as it has with viruses. These all come down to arguments about sem…

Hi! I agree with you, which is why I wrote this- but if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't. And yes, the cells in your heart have an effective and potenitial niche! We seem to have many tools to engineer viruses, but few to engineer mitochondria- perhaps considering them as alive could change that!

> if you google "are mitochondria alive" gemini says it isn't

And my grandmother is a bicycle.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#210

Post by im3w1l »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #132
jamiek88 wrote: post #124

Earlier 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/

Absolutely fascinating. Especially the exotic multicellularity part. Maybe if it evolves even more multicellularity it will struggle with cancers of its own and have to reevolve tumor suppression, wouldn't that be something?!
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