New project explores mitochondrial evolution across diverse life forms

Vamsi Mootha, project leader, institute member at the Broad, professor of systems biology at HMS, investigator in the Department of Molecular Biology at Mass General Brigham, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) InvestigatorWith this consortium, we've repurposed everything we've learned over the last 15 years characterizing the mammalian mitoproteome to rapidly and diligently build out these inventories, creating a foundational resource for a new field of comparative mitochondrial biology."

Mitochondrial marvels

The researchers worked with Broad Institute's newest advanced mass spectrometry technologies to help determine which nuclear genes encode proteins that end up in each organism's mitochondria. "The speed and scale of this project would not have been possible without the platform's expertise in state-of-the-art, next-generation proteomic technology," said Namrata Udeshi, senior director of proteomics at the Broad, where she is an institute scientist, and one of the principal investigators in the consortium.

The other papers focused on analyses of individual organisms. In one study, the team catalogued the mitochondrial machinery of Giardia, which causes a diarrheal disease, contains a mere 59 proteins and lacks energy-producing capabilities, making it more of a "remnant" mitochondrion that further challenges the narrow view of the organelle as simply a powerhouse.

For another study, they developed new methods to study the mitochondria of Babesia, a tick-borne pathogen behind a malaria-like illness that's spreading in New England due to climate change. Importantly, those methods may also work for related pathogens, such as those that cause malaria and toxoplasmosis.

The team also studied the weed Arabidopsis, which is a leading model organism and uses energy not only from chloroplasts, but also from mitochondria. While prior work had helped to define the plant mitochondrial proteome, this new inventory appears to be the most comprehensive and accurate and was generated using an approach that can likely work for other plants.

In addition, more than half of the proteins in these catalogs have unknown functions, so future studies may one day reveal even more clues to what makes human life, and that of all complex organisms on Earth, possible.

Source:

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

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