mitochondrion

An amoeba is another 300x scaling up and if my chatGPTing is right, scaling up to a mouse is like 63,000x larger than a mitochondrion.

Like the cell and mitochondrion, after they merged they can't be apart, can't pay their costs individually anymore.

Surely there is a number determined for the maximum lifetime energy output potential (work) of a single mitochondrion.

Although most of a cell's DNA is contained in the cell nucleus, the mitochondrion has its own independent genome.

Also very pleased to see the mitochondrion being referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as is law.

Maybe that oxygen atom lets the molecule block the mitochondrion (sort of important for heart cells)?

Let me suggest the mitochondrion as the main target to explore: - In a very simple but accurate analogy, a computer will not work properly - if at all - if the power is not coming.

What guides the behavior of a mitochondrion utterly lacking mtDNA?

The vast majority of the 2000+ proteins that make up a mitochondrion are encoded in the nuclear genome, synthesized in the cytoplasm, and imported into mitochondria.

> if my chatGPTing is right, scaling up to a mouse is like 63,000x larger than a mitochondrion You have access to the two sizes, and you used ChatGPT to get the ratio?

The guy who postulated and validated the way that the mitochondrion operates was very much a scientific outsider and had to secure funding and run his lab outside the traditional scientific apparatus.

Did the mitochondrion emerge early in the evolution of the eukaryotic cell through the union, by an unspecified mechanism, of a primitive archaeon (host) and primitive bacterium (endosymbiont), with this union actually being instrumental in the emergence of the eukaryotic cell?

The electrons then flow through a few proteins, which use the electrons' energy to create a proton gradient in the mitochondrion, which is then used to create ATP (the "currency" of chemical energy in many cells).

There's not necessarily anything preventing the remainder of the mitochondrial genome from making the same transition, although perhaps the mitochondrion would still require a "placeholder" chromosome because its cycle of reproduction is tied in with replication of that chromosome as it is in bacteria.

The problem being that there's no support for the continued existence of the absorbed "start-up" mitochondrion within the host cell, so it only ever gets out the one product it was working on at the time it was acquired, rather than continuing to pump out new little ideas.