Evolutionary tuning of a cellular ’power plant’

Protein profiles generated by mass spectrometry, referred to as MitCOM. Source: AG Fackler/Pfanner/Becker - Researchers from Freiburg and Bonn succeed in the first comprehensive description of the protein machines in the mitochondria, the power plants of the cell. Mitochondria are membrane-enveloped structures found in all cells of higher organisms, where they produce most of the necessary energy ("power plants of the cell"). In addition, these organelles have important functions in the synthesis and degradation of certain biomolecules and in a variety of intracellular signaling processes. In close collaboration, researchers from the Institutes of Biochemistry led by Nikolaus Pfanner and Physiology led by Bernd Fakler at the University of Freiburg and the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Bonn led by Thomas Becker have now applied a newly developed analytical method to comprehensively map the structural organization of proteins in mitochondria. The results provide the first comprehensive insight into the structure and organization of mitochondrial proteins in protein machines of varying complexity, providing the basis for future studies of new protein functions and structures. This study is currently published in Nature .