anonymous_sorry
8 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
8 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
8 months ago
or a new understanding of mitochondrial categories according to specialization of function
partomniscient
8 months ago
...and also the state of their neighbours which makes me start thinking of Conway's Game of Life...
anonymous_sorry
8 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.