Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell that converts energy from the food you eat into energy. The mitochondria play a crucial role in a wide range of biological processes, such as metabolism, heart contraction, and DNA synthesis.
But, what exactly is the role of mitochondria in life? Continue reading below to find out more about mitochondria and its importance in survival and human existence.
Understand and Treat Disease
Studying the role of mitochondria in the development of diseases is crucial in understanding and treating different medical diseases. When it comes to cell survival, mitochondria help cells maintain electrically charged particles, which store calcium ions involved in muscle contraction, blood clotting, and other important biological tasks.
Here are some ways mitochondria can help in understanding and treating medical diseases:
- Mitochondria allow red blood cells to carry oxygen to body tissues, which are crucial to the initial production of steroid hormones, such as cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.
- Mitochondria also contribute to cellular death because it shuts off energy supply, which produces damaging free radicals. The life-and-death roles are essential in the early detection and treatment of disease. These activities can be healthy, as a way of getting rid of abnormal cells or an unplanned response due to overwhelming stress, like a heart attack or stroke.
- Malfunctioning mitochondria can be implicated in heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, and cancer. Also, inborn metabolic disorders can alter the proper functioning of mitochondrial proteins due to genetic changes.
Find Ways to Combat Stress
Many people are too busy with life, without time to rest and get enough sleep. By learning how the mitochondria react and function during stress, scientists and researchers can find ways to combat stress. This includes those that elicit emotional responses, such as anger, anxiety, and depression.
Mitochondrial responses to different stressors may not be linear, so it's important to distinguish between life stressors and stressors resulting from individualized experiences.
According to a study, one of the critical components of a stress response include mitochondria, which are biomarkers of different biological processes. While the findings show that there's a need to highlight more interdisciplinary research to find out the relationship of the mind, body, and mitochondria, it’s equally important to assess essential factors that can influence mitochondrial function or content.
Source of Metabolic Energy
Mitochondria are responsible for the production of useful energy derived from carbohydrate and fatty acid breakdown. The matrix of mitochondria contains the enzymes and genetic system responsible for oxidative metabolism. The oxidative breakdown of fatty acids and glucose is the main source of animal cells' metabolic energy.
Here are the details of metabolic energy production of mitochondria:
- The high-energy electrons are transferred to molecular oxygen from the membrane through a series of carriers, and the energy is converted to potential energy.
- The inner mitochondrial membrane contains a high percentage of proteins involved in oxidative metabolism and the transport of metabolites.
Carry Genetic Information
Mitochondria contain the human genetic system. It’s distinct and separate from the cell's nuclear genome. Mitochondrial genomes are circular DNA molecules that carry genetic information, encoding, and translating protein-coding sequences in the mitochondria.
The mitochondrial genome of humans contains 13 protein-coding sequences. Mitochondrial DNA, like those seen in nuclear genomes, can be altered. Mutations are deleterious to the mitochondria. Fertilized eggs carry almost all mitochondria rather than the sperm, so DNA germ-line mutations are transmitted by the mother to the next generation.
Here are some of the examples of diseases resulting from DNA mutations:
- Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy: This eye condition may lead to blindness due to mitochondrial gene mutation.
- Cancer: Abnormal mitochondrial functioning cause tumor formation as a result of mitochondrial mutation. Non-inherited or somatic mutations are not passed to children through genes, such as those that cause certain cancers, such as breast, stomach, liver, kidney, and colon tumors, as well as lymphoma (cancer of immune cells) and leukemia (cancer of blood-forming tissue).
- Age-related Hearing Impairment: It develops with age, as early as age 30 to 40 years old, which affects both ears that worsen gradually with time due to changes in the structure of mitochondria. Cells in the inner ear have high energy demands, which are critical for hearing. That's why mitochondrial DNA damage causes irreversible ear function alteration, like hearing loss.
Conclusion
Studying how the mitochondria functions and changes in times of disease, stress, presence of certain hormones, enzymes, and nutrients can affect the entire cell. In return, it affects the whole body, as well as the psychological and mental well-being of a person.
The life-and-death situations that mitochondria face significantly contribute to cellular survival, which reflects human survival and existence in times of stress and disease.
