Arabidopsis thaliana plants used in this study (credit: J. Auwerx/EPFL)
Scientists at EPFL have discovered that the mechanism that mitochondria use to defend mammalian cells against protein-damaging stress also exists in plants. The work is published in Molecular Cell. Image: Arabidopsis thaliana plants used in this study. On the left is a plant under normal growth conditions, while on the right is a plant treated with doxycycline, which has significantly stunted its growth but is protected against aging as evidenced by its fresher appearance (credit: J. Auwerx/EPFL). Mitochondria are cell organelles that play critical roles in maintaining the cell's health, or homeostasis. One way that mitochondria do this is by harvesting energy though oxidative phosphorylation, where various enzymes in the mitochondria release energy to produce the molecule ATP, the cell's "energy currency" that can be used in other processes. This is why mitochondria are often described as the cell's "powerhouse".
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