Microsporidia are highly adapted eukaryotic intracellular parasites that infect a variety of animals. Microsporidia contain no recognisable mitochondrion, but recently have been shown to have evolved from fungi and to possess heat shock protein genes derived from mitochondria. These findings make it clear that microsporidian ancestors were mitochondrial, yet it remains unknown whether they stil...

Microtubules were identified in the subsarcolemmal area of smooth muscle cell in the taenia coli of guinea-pigs. They may traverse myofibrils but more frequently they run parallel with the long axis of the cell. The microtubules were often in contact with sarcolemmal caveolae. A caveola appeared to contact with an end of a microtubule or with the outer membrane of a mitochondrion. Occasionally ...

Statistics of mitochondrial association with spindle poles in wild type and mto1∆ (Figures 1D and 2B) Out of the 35 imaged wild-type cells, 18 cells showed constant mitochondrial association (red bar in Figure 1D), 6 showed at least one spindle pole free from mitochondria for at least 5 minutes (green bar in Figure 1D), 6 displayed temporary mitochondrial detachment (not included in the compari...

The mitochondrion is one of the defining characteristics of eukaryotic cells, and to date, no eukaryotic lineage has been shown to have lost mitochondria entirely. In certain anaerobic or microaerophilic lineages, however, the mitochondrion has become severely reduced that it lacks a genome and no longer synthesizes ATP. One example of such a reduced organelle, called the mitosome, is found in ...

Monocercomonoides is the first example of a eukaryote lacking even the most reduced form of a mitochondrion-related organelle. This has important implications for cellular processes and our understanding of reductive mitochondrial evolution across the eukaryotic tree of life.

Introduction: The Mitochondrion and Its Genome ............................................................ 1 The Human Mitochondrial Genome ................................................................................... 3 The D-loop and Human Population Genetics ..................................................................... 4 Mitochondrial DNA and Recent Human History .................

Mitochondria are organelles present in the cytoplasm of most eukaryotic cells; although they have their own DNA, the majority of the proteins necessary for a functional mitochondrion are coded by the nuclear DNA and only after transcription and translation they are imported in the mitochondrion as proteins. The primary role of the mitochondrion is electron transport and oxidative phosphorylatio...

OBJECTIVE To screen and analyze key express sequence tags (ESTs) which were differentially displayed in every period of SD rats' primary hepatic carcinoma and reveal the molecular mechanism of carcinogenesis. METHODS Using diethylnitrosamine (DENA) as a cancerigenic agent, animal models with different phases of primary hepatic cancer were constructed in SD rats. Rats were respectively sacrifi...

Diverse, distantly-related eukaryotic lineages have adapted to low-oxygen environments, and possess mitochondrion-related organelles that have lost the capacity to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP) through oxidative phosphorylation. A subset of these organelles, hydrogenosomes, has acquired a set of characteristic ATP generation enzymes commonly found in anaerobic bacteria. The recipient of...

Mitochondria are dynamic organelles, undergoing both fission and fusion regularly in interphase cells. Mitochondrial fission is thought to be part of a quality-control mechanism whereby damaged mitochondrial components are segregated from healthy components in an individual mitochondrion, followed by mitochondrial fission and degradation of the damaged daughter mitochondrion. Fission also plays...