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Mitochondria
What is mitochondria and how does analyzing it help scientists?
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Mitochondria is actually a part of the DNA chain in a cell. It seems to be the part that tells the cell what type of cell it is - is it a skin cell, a part of your lung etc etc.
It is also the part which switches on replication and tells the cell to copy itself. Genetic diseases in the main involve cells going wrong and then copying that error.
This includes diseases such as Diabetes, Huntingdon's and some forms of cancer where there is evidence of genetic links - breast cancer being one.
If scientists can discover how mitochondria works then it could help them discover 1, how to switch off faulty cells and halt the spread of a disease through the body. & 2, Change the messages that the mitochondria send so as to make the body replicate healthy cells to replaced diseased or damaged ones.
Hope this helps
without mitochondria it would be possible for eukaryotes (animals, plants, fungi etc.) to produce just a net gain of 2 ATP molecules per glucose molecule by glycolysis, however, mitochondria increase that to a gain to 38 ATP per glucose molecule -greatly increasing the energy liberated & allowing for more active cells. the two processes that take place in the mitochondria are the kreb'scycle & electron transfer system.
as previously said the mitochondria are passed down the maternal line, & this makes them useful for population/heritage studies. also the predictable rate of mutation in mitochondria can act as kind of a biological clock -these properties have been used to discover population trends such as near extinctions/ population bottlenecks in history.
as an added note it is also thought that mitochondria are symbiotic organisms & were originally seprate from eukaryotic cells, &that at some point in eukaryotic evolution they were taken up as this benefited both organisms -the eukaryote as it provided vastly more energy & -the mitochondria as it provided greater safety/& a regular supply of glucose. the same is thought for other organells such as chloroplasts in plants.