I'd say you're massively selling current knowledge short. Of course in biology you can always go a level deeper and say "but how exactly... " however there's be

I'd say you're massively selling current knowledge short. Of course in biology you can always go a level deeper and say "but how exactly... " however there's been a lot of research on mitochondria and there are entire centres that study it. In comparison to complex eukaryotic cells, the mitochondria have been see as relatively low-hanging fruit in terms of systems-level modelling (e.g. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6140/1567 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6140/1567) due to their simplicity as a regressed prokaryote with a short circular genome. adden.: here's a nice overview of the biochemistry of a mitochondrion, which has been known for at least a decade (and is taught at A-level or early degree level biology): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3350335/figure/F3/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3350335/figure/F...