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‘Social’ Mitochondria, Whispering Between Cells, Influence Health
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cell biology
‘Social’ Mitochondria, Whispering Between Cells, Influence Health
By
Katarina Zimmer
July 6, 2021
Mitochondria appear to communicate and cooperate with one another, both within and between cells. Biologists are only just beginning to understand how and why.
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In this false-colored cross-section through an ovarian cell, the mitochondria appear as yellow-edged organelles. Evidence suggests that mitochondria send signals to one another and operate in coordinated networks.
P.M. Motta, S. Makabe & T. Naguro/Science Source
Introduction
By Katarina Zimmer
Contributing Writer
July 6, 2021
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bacteria
biology
cell biology
cells
cellular communication
cooperation
genome
networks
neurons
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During his doctoral research on the ties between aging and mitochondria, Martin Picard frequently saw micrographs of those energy-producing organelles. Yet it wasn’t until fairly late in his graduate work that he first watched sped-up video of mitochondria moving inside live human cells, and the sight came as a revelation.
Tagged with fluorescent dye, the mitochondria were neon squiggles crawling through the soupy interior of the cells — stretching and contracting, fusing together and splitting up again, sidling up to one another and parting ways. Their apparent eagerness to network reminded Picard of the social exchanges among complex creatures like fish and ants. “They just look a little more primitive,” he said.
Now, after years of work in his own laboratory and others that has underscored the importance of those dynamic mitochondrial interactions, he is pressing that comparison more literally. Recently, in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Picard, a mitochondrial psychobiologist at Columbia University, and the neuroscientist Carmen Sandi of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne argued that mitochondria need to be understood as the first known social organelles.
As evidence, they cite a long line of discoveries showing that mitochondria are surprisingly interdependent and that their functions go far beyond their familiar role as cellular powerhouses: Mitochondria also make certain types of hormones, help drive immune responses, and shape the developmental fate of cells. To these diverse ends, like ants in a colony, mitochondria divide up tasks, form groups, synchronize activities and respond to both their environment and each other. A “social lens,” Picard and Sandi wrote, may be essential not only for explaining the behavior of individual mitochondria, but for revealing the mitochondrial collectives that influence human health.
Martin Picard, a researcher at Columbia University who studies the ties between psychosocial stress, mitochondria and brain-body processes, believes that the social networks of mitochondria hold clues to health and biological function.
Courtesy of Martin Picard
Despite some reservations about the label “social,” other scientists generally agree that understanding the bustling signaling networks that mitochondria establish within and between cells could help unlock secrets about health and disease. “If we understand how the mitochondria are acting together, and we learn how to manipulate it,” said James Eberwine, a molecular neurobiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “we’re going to gain so much more insight into biology.”
The Deep Roots of Sociality
To understand how organelles like mitochondria could be social, it helps to remember that sociality is a phenomenon with deep evolutionary roots. Bacteria are among the simplest of organisms, yet they exhibit remarkable community behaviors; they can act independently or together, communicating and cooperating to form complex structures.
During the heyday of single-celled life about 2 billion years ago, the forerunners of mitochondria were bacteria that found a niche inside larger cells, providing them with energy. This symbiosis was so beneficial that it likely powered the evolution of multicellular organisms. As a relic of their bacterial origins, mitochondria still carry their own small genome, separate from the cellular genes in the nucleus.
But although all our mitochondria are inherited from our mother’s egg, individual mitochondria differ at the genomic level. Some mitochondria...