That mitochondria are conserved as an independent organelle across almost [1] all eukaryotes, across billions of years of history, suggests this is something the nuclear can’t easily in house.
That could also suggest that any other strategies were just out competed by this one and lost the opportunity to develop further.
Absolutely. It also means--however--that any niche where alternative did exist, when exposed to mitochondrial life, they lost.
Now that I think about it, it would be pretty funny if we're this universe's cheela [1], a freakishly overclocked biosphere that runs faster not because it had to but because it happened to.
It's perfectly possible that mitochondria are the dinosaurs of "cell powerplants" that just haven't encountered the asteroid to let other (ultimately better) solutions develop.
>It is the first eukaryotic genus to be found to completely lack mitochondria, and all hallmark proteins responsible for mitochondrial function. The genus also lacks any other mitochondria related organelles (MROs) such as hydrogenosomes or mitosomes. Data suggests that the absence of mitochondria is not an ancestral feature, but rather due to secondary loss.
True, it's an anaerobic ersatz cnidarian [1] that may be an escaped cancer [2].
wow. we could be surrounded by so many extraordinary organisms and not even know it because there's so much variety just in our own backyards
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/1-458-bac...