Biologists Discover Unknown Powers In Mighty Mitochondria
The discovery that mitochondria might control the reprogramming of cells drove Khacho and Ruth Slack, her postdoctoral adviser at the University of Ottawa, to further investigate the role of the organelles in neuronal stem cells. But Slack and Khacho saw the opposite in neural stem cells from rodents: In their work, mitochondria start off elongated in the stem cells, then become fragmented in progenitor cells (which are more committed to a specific cell fate) before becoming elongated again as they differentiate into neurons. The real significance of Slack and Khacho’s work in neural stem cells might be that the mitochondria’s role in neurogenesis relates to something more dynamic than shape alone.
Source: www.quantamagazine.org