Mitochondria Essay

Humans, like most eukaryotic organisms require a sufficient amount of energy to function and fuel the complex processes that take place in the body, and to do this the cells in our bodies need energy. However the human body cannot harness this energy on its own. This is all possible due to a small independent organelle called the mitochondrion (Petraglia, 2010). The Mitochondrion is a “membrane bound organelle located within the cytoplasm of the cell” (Seidel-Rogol, 2010) that synthesizes ATP (adenosine triphosphate) by conducting a chain of metabolic reactions. Mitochondria provide the cells of organisms with the energy, in the form of ATP to carry out specific functions, which are essential for their survival. In order to carry out this process, mitochondria include a set of mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA (Kelly et al., 2005) that is individual of nucleic DNA. Unlike the DNA contained in the nucleus this mitochondrial DNA contains a specific set of instructions or

Inside the cell, mitochondria are dispersed unequally causing an uneven amount of mitochondria to be split between the daughter cells during meiosis. Mitochondrial DNA undergo a form of Mendelian inheritance, in which the DNA is fused together through sexual reproduction (Alberts et al., 2002). This occurs when the cells are “combined”, but since only the mother’s mitochondria are used the zygote contains nucleic DNA that differs from the DNA in its mitochondria. Although this is initially good since this means each mitochondrion will perform functions exactly like the other. Problems arise when mitochondrial diseases come in play. Since mtDNA is inherited maternally, if the mother has a genetic mutation in her mitochondria, the same mutated mitochondria will be passed on to her young (Rogers, 2011). Both genders will be affected in this case since, due to the fact that females pass on an ‘X’