Gordon Freedman and I both developed an interest in mitochondria due to our love of cycling and to understand the limits of performance. Whereas I sought to find a racer’s edge by delving into the biology underlying endurance sports, Freedman sought answers to a simpler question: Why can’t I push as hard as I used to be able to?
Freedman, who is among the many people with a mitochondrial disorder, is the founder of MitoWorld, a hub for people interested in the latest research on mitochondria.
Follow us down the rabbit hole to a world where there are multiple genomes to consider — one of them bacterial in nature — and a dearth of experimental tools has made it hard to connect mitochondria and their functions to other questions in biology and health. But there’s also hope that by connecting mitochondria to research areas such as cancer and neurodegenerative disease, scientists can peer further into the darkness than they could with only the light of the nuclear genome.
The Ion Genomics Podcast is also available on Apple and Spotify podcasts:
Show Notes
Distribution of pools of mitochondria in skeletal muscle cells. Image credit: Parry et al. “Impact of Capillary and Sarcolemmal Proximity on Mitochondrial Structure and Energetic Function in Skeletal Muscle.” The Journal of Physiology. April 2, 2024.
Guo, Y., Xue, Y. “Mitochondria as convergence hubs for innate immunity pathways.” Communications Biology. (June 8, 2026).
Shen et al. “Mitochondria as Cellular and Organismal Signaling Hubs.” The Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. July 8, 2022.
IMDB page for A Brief History of Time.
