There are highly conserved molecular structures that made it to our DNA. This is a good hint about the common origin of life. Due to my genetic defect in the m

There are highly conserved molecular structures that made it to our DNA. This is a good hint about the common origin of life. Due to my genetic defect in the mitochondrial respiratory chain (ETC), this one[1] caught my attention. Apart from its potential therapeutic application, it shows how a xenotransplantation[2] at the molecular level can rescue a defective molecular structure in a living creature that is orders of magnitude more complex than the donor. If you visualize the ETC as an engine with 5 different steps, with step 1 being broken, you go and get a repair piece from a much simple organism, a yeast in this case, plug it in the receptor and, lo and behold, the engine start working again. And not only that, the piece from the donor serves the same function (pump protons to complex II of the ETC), but it is "internally" much more simple. This is a molecular "Lego" across species !! [1] http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016288 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation