How does clearing bad mitochondria affect stem cell division?

Most of us have enough memory of biology to remind us that mitochondria are called "the powerhouse of the cell"

Dysfunctional mitochondria can lead to neurodegenerative diseases, congenital heart disease, stroke and, of course, cancer

"I study a process called mitochondrial phagocytosis, which cleans up these damaged mitochondria," said Alicia Pickrell, assistant professor in Virginia Tech's College of Neuroscience.

The work of Pickrell and her team could not only provide treatment or preventive medicine for chronic diseases like heart disease, but "can inform us of many other diseases.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded Pickerer a five-year, $1.

"Instead of focusing on a hypothesis or idea, this grant is focused on promising, early-career scientists whose committee (her) peers believe they will make a major breakthrough in the field

Back to the analogy from high school biology class: When a cell's nucleus divides, the cell replicates its DNA, producing two identical daughter cells

But what if the cell doesn't receive the message to stop dividing?

"If I'm a cell, and I don't get these signals, 'I'm cleaning out damaged mitochondria,' and I keep dividing," Pickrel said, "Now that I'm dividing, my bad mitochondria are inherited into these healthy ones.

She compares it to a single cell in a car battery: At first, even if several cells fail, the battery may continue to work, but there is a threshold

Pickrell is trying to understand how the removal of bad mitochondria affects stem cell division, which genes are involved, and how mitochondria communicate with other organelles within the cell

There's another big complication to the puzzle: The mitochondria don't touch the nucleus, so if there's no physical connection, how is the communication sent?

Pickrell and her research team have already discovered a molecule, a kinase, which is a specific protein that moves around inside cells to deliver messages, but Pickrell thinks there must be other ways

"We think biology is smart, that cells don't rely on just one thing to keep themselves alive," she said

With the funding, her team is initially delving into neural stem cells because they divide frequently and undergo massive mitophagy to clear bad mitochondria

"During cell division, you have to have a lot of energy to do it, so it's important to have a healthy pool of mitochondria," she said