anonymous_sorry
10 months ago
Is the title here quite right?
It sounds more like mitochondria can specialise their biochemistry depending on the needs of the cell.
UniverseHacker
10 months ago
The title is wrong, and is not the actual title of the paper. They discovered some new aspects of how regular mitochondria work, not a new kind of mitochondria.
cbogie
10 months ago
or a new understanding of mitochondrial categories according to specialization of function
partomniscient
10 months ago
...and also the state of their neighbours which makes me start thinking of Conway's Game of Life...
anonymous_sorry
10 months ago
This is quite common in cellular differentiation.
Say a tissue needs a few cells of a certain type, roughly evenly spaced throughout. One strategy to achieve this is for all cells in the region to have a tendancy towards developing those characteristics, but also for the quickest to do so to simultaneously produce a messaging molecule that suppresses that tendency in its near neighbours.