An anonymous reader writes:
Scientists have found a eukaryote microbe that completely lacks mitochondria, which are the powerhouses inside eukaryotic cells, the type of cells that make up humans, animals, plants and fungi. All eukaryotic cells contain a nucleus, organelles and mitochondrion. Scientists believe they were once free-living bacteria that got engulfed by primitive, ancient cells that were evolving to become what they are today. Anna Karnkowska, a researcher in evolutionary biology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, found a gut microbe that contains no trace that it made any mitochondrial proteins at all. "That should theoretically kill the cell -- it shouldn't exist," she said. The researchers learned that these cells use a kind of machinery that is different than relying on mitochondria to assemble iron-sulfur clusters, which is thought to be a mitochondrial function. Michael Gray, biochemist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, calls the discovery of a eukaryote without any vestige of mitochondrion, "unprecedented." He adds, 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, because this organism's ancestors had mitochondria that were then lost after the cells acquired their non-mitochondrial system for making iron-sulfur clusters.
Mitochondria?
By DarkSabreLord
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2016-May-12 18:34
• Score: 4, Funny
• Thread
Repeat after me: "Mitochondria is not necessarily the powerhouse of the cell"
Good!
By HideyoshiJP
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2016-May-12 18:49
• Score: 4, Interesting
• Thread
This is good news. Finally, life has found a way to prevent a real
Parasite Eve situation. Let's hope the mitochondria in existing life forms doesn't revolt.
Not all eukaryota have mitochondria
By Anonymous Coward
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2016-May-12 18:54
• Score: 5, Interesting
• Thread
Yet again, hyperbole trumps facts. The fringes of the eukaryota portion of the tree of life include anaerobic single celled organisms which do not have mitochondria any more, although their ancestors did. Parabasilids, which include the human pathogen Trichomonas vaginalis, are eukaryotes, are anaerobic, and yet are free of mitochondria. This NPR article is pretty much clickbait.
It had to be said
By SuperKendall
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2016-May-12 18:56
• Score: 4, Funny
• Thread
Scientists have found a eukaryote microbe that completely lacks mitochondria
The force is weak with this one.
Re:Not all eukaryota have mitochondria
By Michael Woodhams
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2016-May-12 20:07
• Score: 4, Informative
• Thread
This was my understanding, but TFA says:
For decades, researchers have tried to find eukaryotic cells that don't have mitochondria --- and for a while they thought they'd found some. One example is Giardia, a human gut parasite that causes diarrhea. It was considered to be a kind of living fossil because it had a nucleus but didn't seem to have acquired mitochondria. But additional studies on Giardia and other microbes showed that actually, the mitochondria were there.
"It turned out that all of them actually had some kind of remnant mitochondrion," says Karnkowska, who notes that mitochondria perform key jobs in the cell beyond just generating power.
I figure their knowledge is more compete and up to date than mine.