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It doesn't seem the article addresses this, but I'd ask these questions: "would it be possible that mitochondria's evolutional interest and the organism's inter
by nemonemo 2y ago
It doesn't seem the article addresses this, but I'd ask these questions: "would it be possible that mitochondria's evolutional interest and the organism's interest are not aligned?" "how many independent DNA can an organism possess?" "why mitochondria do not elicit immune reactions? Or can they?"
- hammock 2y ago1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_curse 2) By "organism" I assume you mean "cell" since humans have several thousand different species with their own DNA living on or inside the body at any given moment. We can speak of animal cells, which have two (species and mitochondria) - and plant cells, which have three (species, mitochondria, and chloroplasts). If there can be one two or three, I don't see why there couldn't be even more. 3) Mitochondria are usually sequestered within the cell, which limits their exposure to immune cells. The immune system primarily targets pathogens that are outside the host cells. In fact, some pathogens can exploit mitochondrial pathways to evade immune detection - the most famous of which is HIV.
- nemonemo 2y agoThank you for these amazing answers. Mother's curse is a notion I had no idea of, but it makes sense now that I think about it. And chloroplasts have separate DNAs from the species ones? That really is also eye-opening.. Biology is full of wonders.