@@IndieCanadian Yep - there’s idiots / crooks that sell resveratrol and NAD precursors to improve longevity and health and eating an orange is more effective
Loss of function is easy to explain. Especially for parasites. They evolved from organisms that had the full set of organelles that shed the need for some of them borrowing the host's processes instead.
These eukaryotes are parasitic and are in various stages of making the mitochondria reduntant by getting their ATP from other ATP forming reactions like the arginine deiminase pathway, glycolysis plus several others. Same situation as when cave dwelling animals lose their sight and eventually their eyes through lack of use. A new book published by Austin Macauley Publishers titled From Chemistry to Life on Earth outlines abiogenesis in great detail with a solution to the evolution of the genetic code and the ribosome as well as the cell in general using 290 references, 50 illustrations and several information tables with a proposed molecular natural selection formula with a worked example for ATP.
0:16 that is it folks, we are getting Parasite Eve 3 (its a game about evil mitochondria) (yes, really). Jokes aside, this is a very, very interesting discovery.
This organism uses ATP. The advantage mitochondria give eukaryotes is their efficient generation of ATP through conversion of O2+sugar to CO2. Eukaryotic cells can rely on fermentation to generate additional ATP, without mitochondria, but doing so yields less energy per unit of food (e.g. muscle "burn" during difficult exercise is caused by cells desperately making extra ATP via fermentation) To me, your thought process is a good one :) It is tempting to conclude that these organisms could "afford" to lose their mitochondria because of their parasitic lifestyle; that is, absorbing nutrients and energy from the host while generating less of its own.
Glycolysis already generates ATP and it occurs in the host cell; what mitochondria do is generate more energy out of what is essentially the byproduct of glycolysis - which is pyruvate. The O2 just happens to be the terminal electron acceptor in the mitochondrion's electron transport chain, which is what powers the vast majority of ATP production. The CO2 comes from the Citric Acid Cycle, after the pyruvate is processed and enters the cycle.
@@MadRob11 It is tempting to think that because it is true. There are Several ATP producing reactions which they can use but the amount of ATP they need is reduced so maintaining mitochondria slowly becomes unecessary.
In addition to classical fermentation we do in our cells, these organisms also can make hydrogen gas which makes it possible to oxidize some of the reducing equivalents. So the terminal electron acceptor of metabolism is actually protons. Protists are so cool. As many of you have pointed out this is not as efficient as oxidative phosphorylation but perhaps because food is not really limiting its enough :)
A complete mystery is an opportunity for another video. I love that approach to life. Also very much looking forward to more information on mitochondria, they are fascinating.
I hope you'll talk a bit about mitochondria biogenesis, as well as mitochondria transplants. I'm curious how easily it would be to transplant mitochondria into cells.
I know this video probably won't be as successful as the usual astronomical ones, but holy crap is this potentially big. I wonder if there is a link between how these organisms produce ATP and why mitochondria exist to begin with. We know most early cells were probably extremophiles. Maybe as conditions on Earth became more and more tame, these early ways of producing ATP just weren't enough. So some procaryote somehow ended up inside an eucaryote. The eucaryote was more efficient at acquiring food, while the procaryote was more efficient at processing that food in its new rich environment.
The proto eukaryote didn't always have an endosymbiont to begin with. People commonly believe that an endosymbiosis is a prerequisite to eukaryogenesis, but that's likely not necessarily the case.
This is so cool, given that life started several times on Earth, on different locations and occasions and managed to merge together giving us cellular organelles... I wish that more of this merging happened and that life was more diverse on this planet.
Ah yes, the favorite of western USA waterways. Giardia. Thought I recognized that picture! If the organism is odd, the incidence of its effects on hosts is just as weird. Some are asymptomatic, while others get terribly ill. Giardia is a well known but very enigmatic critter! There are also a lot of humans who carry it as a constant companion, most without any noticeable ill effect. Where are today's Dickson Despommiers?
Glycolysis. Single called organisms can sometimes get “ enough” atp production anaerobically though glycolysis ( fermentation) which occurs outside mitochondria. Yeast are eukaryotic and do it in absence of O2 in fermentation.
Something I don't understand. If earth and it's environment is so conducive for life....how come we don't see "new" life springing up all through history? A thousand times, a million times? Why did it start and then no "new" life came up after that.
Is there any forum, any means of communicating with you to discuss a physics Concept that I do not believe has been Explored Sufficiently, is Foundationally Critical?
Saying that mitochondria are generally crucial for eukaryotes, but ignoring that protozoa are eukaryotes, and just mentioning another example of eukaryotes not needing mitochondria (protozoa typically have either mitochondria, or chloroplasts, or some even both, despite also either one not being fully functional or doing something else completely. Protozoa are a mix of everything that doesn´t stick anywhere else on the tree of life). Plus, many beings manage to make energy without needing oxygen (at least directly/free) through anaerobic pathways, using biochemical processes like alcoholic fermentation. Even our cells, when oxygen is low, do it, producing lactic acid, etc...
Yeah! There's been quite a miscommunication on cellular biology in schools. Not many people even knew that oxygen isn't even an absolute necessity for most life outside kingdom animalia, and that it's even toxic to some.
Please start the Mitochondria video with "Mitochondria is the Powerhouse of the Cell" just to get it out of the way. An entire generation grew up with that drilled into our brains!
@7:30 Could these organisms be former parasites who've lost their mitochondria before becoming free living once again? Or did they evolve from anaerobic eukaryotes who've adapted somehow to aerobic conditions??
The hypothesis that archea prokaryotic cell that have circular DNA jumping in to linear chromosome which requires centerioles /centromere to allow the eukaryotic chromosome to independently recombine and segregate. It’s a big step and required multiple evolutionary steps which all have been missing in our knowledge of single cell organisms. So far we should not forget the only entity that has linear DNA is prokaryote, but they are viruses
Anything called "Mitochondria," has to be strange! Sounds like an ingredient put into a lot of my "processed foods! Is Anton just making this stuff up?
So mitochondria - need for energy? I ask because termites would need quite a bit of energy to break down cellulose. No mitochondria would need to acquire chemical energies, in which case anaerobic environments do have a few options.
They make atp the same way prokaryotic cells do…. They have those genes in their own genome. CRISPR was a bacterial immune system component before it was used in gene editing. My assumption: these cells tried to protect themselves against the “mitochondrial” cell by doing a crispr and taking reverse compliment. It just so happened to be that this particular compliment was incorporated in such a way as to make a new protein coding gene that was functional. Now cell has become death.
"[A]nd this was confirmed through Gene sequencing where not a single mitochondrial protein was discovered inside the cell." Gene sequencing does not discover protein.
There are some species of eukaryote that _do_ lack mitochondria, but still have remnants or some semblance of it - either leftover mitochondrial genes in the nucleus, or a highly devolved mitochondrion which lacks its own DNA and ribosomes.
