The new doping trick – and why scientists fear athletes are already using it

What I was curious about a decade ago was if one could transplant mitochondria from bats into mice (and some day humans) and what effect would it have on their longevity. One of the things that contribute to aging is collateral damage caused by mitochondria operation. Bats due to energy requirements of flight have quite incredible mitochondria.

It probably wouldn't be easy as there's some cellular genetics that influences how given species cells interact with their mitochondria, but recent gene manipulation techniques and successes like "dire wolves" and "woolly mice" give me hope.

Mitochondria are very important and they do gradually wear out. It's so important to have them fresh that all of your mitochondria came from the egg of your mother and were produced in her early development before she was even born and were kept dormant until fertilization so you can get a fresh new set of mitochondria. Male mitochondria that aged (because sperm is produced in adults) and get additionally used up as the sperm moves are completely discarded during the fertilization.

Not an athlete but fur sure I would like to try this if there aren't significant side effects.

Doping potential aside, this sounds like a very promising area of research. The article mentions increased endurance, peak performance, and anti-aging potential. What are the downsides to having more mitochondria in our cells and why did we evolve to have the levels we currently have?

Some more explaination and the mitochondrial isolation protocol can indeed be found on his website[0].

0. https://sites.google.com/mccullylab.org/mccullylab

Paywall.