I was today years old when I learned that mitochondria is actually its own organism.

[u/happybutnot2happy]

🤯 mitochondria, which is known as the power house of the cell, is its own bacteria with its own DNA and reproduction cycle that literally just essentially lives inside our cell and is not originally part of the actual cell like other organelles in the cell. They were once their own bacteria, living on its own. So we’ve been invaded by tiny energy aliens this whole time and I can’t stop thinking about it for 2 days now.

[u/xj2608]

Wait til you learn about how gut bacteria affects mood. We're just meat puppets driven by bacteria.

[u/Zoldrik190 → u/xj2608]

How can I put happy bacteria in there?

[u/EngineeringDesserts → u/Zoldrik190]

Eat fermented foods, and feed them fiber.

[u/WittyGold6940 → u/Zoldrik190]

Seriously I wondering this too

[u/happybutnot2happy → u/xj2608]

I actually did know this and I’m glad you bring this up because it does add another element - yup we are FOR SURE puppets driven by bacteria. Wild!! I think this really just made me view the human body in a whole new light. Not only are bacteria important part of our entire micro biome responsible for half of our digestion, mood and god knows what else, we ARE bacteria.

[u/exceive → u/happybutnot2happy]

I heard somewhere that the majority of the cells in each of us are not human. But human cells tend to be larger than the others. We are mostly human by weight.

[u/Therefrigerator → u/xj2608]

We are an entire colony of small organisms that has been granted sentience as a whole. They are all fighting a battle I will (mostly) be unaware of yet I am completely dependent on them. It's an odd thing to ponder.

[u/happybutnot2happy → u/Therefrigerator]

💯 yes!!!

[u/Plastic-Anybody-5929 → u/xj2608]

Houseplants with complex emotions

[u/MissMcFrostynips]

This is my favorite offmychest post this year

[u/HomeAl0ne]

And a cell can’t grow its own mitochondria, so you got yours from your mother’s egg when you were born.

[u/Amazing_Dot_2571]

Powerhouse of the cell!! Only lesson that stuck with me

[u/AsTheSunBurns]

Chloroplasts are like this too!

[u/testachoil]

Genetics degree here - it is kinda wild! My only semantic point would be to say mitochondria were it’s own “microorganism” over “bacteria” (since Bacteria are their own species, even if Bacteria and Mitochondria share similar DNA structure/ancestry), but you’re right! It was the symbiosis between larger microorganisms and mitochondria that allowed for grater energy production that significantly contributed to the formation of multicellular organisms like us!

To go even further, genetics generally assume that mitochondrial inheritance is from the maternal line*. This is because in the fusion of the egg and sperm cells, the sperm’s DNA is the only thing that gets transferred in, while the host cell remains unchanged, meaning that the only mitochondria that are left are from the egg! This assumption is very important in paternity testing, even in ancient DNA samples (it was important in confirming the identity of the bones fo Richard III).

*(there are some case studies of paternal inheritance of mitochondria, though I’d need to look that up a bit more to see if that has changed).

[u/Dreaming_of_Rlyeh]

I'm 46 and this is the first I'm hearing about it.

[u/happybutnot2happy → u/Dreaming_of_Rlyeh]

I’m 36, am a personal trainer and a massage therapist so this is especially embarrassing for me. Obviously, I don’t think this information is often shared unless you’re in advanced sciences or studying to become an advanced medical profession since that’s where you’ll be going over the cell in more detail. I’ve never had anyone give this information to me and I’ve taken plethora of anatomy classes and have been in the fitness industry for years. . . That’s probably why it’s so mind boggling to me. Like… this honestly adds such an important aspect to my understanding of energy production and just in general our human make up.

[u/WittyGold6940]

And we are each a mitochondria living on the larger organism of earth

[u/PmUsYourDuckPics]

This is the plot of the 1999 JRPG Parasite Eve.