It's about signal transduction, the process of cells taking up a wide range of external signals, sometimes environmental, sometimes from other organelles within

It's about signal transduction, the process of cells taking up a wide range of external signals, sometimes environmental, sometimes from other organelles within a body in multicellular organisms (single celled critters on the eukaryotic lineage often have many mitochondria, too). It's a very analog process, not really that digital on/off in nature (e.g. many genes aren't really turned off, they just have very slow transcription rates when the trigger isn't present). The references in the paper have some more general information, this one looks good for a broader overview of the history of mitochondrial research: https://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article/44/4/2/231672/Beyond-ATP-new-roles-of-mitochondria https://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article/44/4/2/231672/B...