An Eukaryote that Completely Lacks Mitochondria
Posted on June 11, 2016 Comments (0)
If you don’t have any idea what the title means that is ok. I probably wouldn’t have until the last 15 years when I found how interesting biology is thanks to the internet and wonderful resources online making biology interesting. I hope you find learning about biology as interesting as I do.
…
What they learned is that instead of relying on mitochondria to assemble iron-sulfur clusters, these cells use a different kind of machinery. And it looks like they acquired it from bacteria.
The researchers say this is the first example of any eukaryote that completely lacks mitochondria.
…
However, the results do not negate the idea that the acquisition of a mitochondrion was an important and perhaps defining event in the evolution of eukaryotic cells, he adds.
That’s because it seems clear that this organism’s ancestors had mitochondria that were then lost after the cells acquired their non-mitochondrial system for making iron-sulfur clusters.
Biology is amazing and mitochondria are one of the many amazing details. I wish so much that my education could have given biology a tiny fraction of the interest I have found it in after school.
Related: Human Gene Origins: 37% Bacterial, 35% Animal, 28% Eukaryotic – One Species’ Genome Discovered Inside Another’s – Parasite Evolved from Cnidarians (Jellyfish etc.) – Plants, Unikonts, Excavates and SARs
Categories: Life Science, Research, Science
Tags: biology, dna, Life Science, mitochondria, university research
Leave a Reply
RSS Feed