McCall McPhersonFounder, Modern Thyroid Clinic.

The Vital Role of Mitochondria: Energy Powerhouses Unleashed

2 Apr 2025 · 1 min

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1:03

A short conversational transcript from the YouTube video 'The Vital Role of Mitochondria: Energy Powerhouses Unleashed' in which McCall McPherson and another speaker discuss mitochondrial biology: mitochondria as membrane-bound, bacteria-derived organelles with their own genome; the importance of NAD/NADH in mitochondrial metabolism; the speakers' recent work identifying a transporter that imports NAD into mitochondria; and how the Krebs cycle and electron transport chain produce the proton/electrical gradient used to synthesize ATP.

Chapters

One phrase everyone remembers about mitochondria, right, is that they're the powerhouse of the cell.
Yeah.
They generate most of the ATP that we use. And so they're little membrane bound organelles inside our cells. They're thought to be derived long ago in evolution from bacteria, from sort of a, actually one bacterium invading another. We have the famous nuclear genome that's most of our genes, but there's a separate mitochondrial genome contained in the organelles that's remnant of their bacterial genome. And so they perform all kinds of functions, but some of them are dependent on nad. And since they're inside a double membrane, the NAD has to be transported inside, which is what we've spent a lot of our work on lately, is identifying this transporter that allows NAD that's made in the rest of the cell to get placed inside of the mitochondria and then facilitate a bunch of these ATP generating reactions. Most famously the Krebs cycle, where Ayurvedic comes in and goes around this little circle. You remember from your textbooks that it is spitting off NADH at various points, consuming NAD and making nadh. And NADH is holding those high energy electrons that are the starting point for the electron transport chain.
Which.
Generates an electrical gradient which fuels the pump that makes ATP.
Which basically produces our biological energy, which is ATP, which is needed for what, like almost again, every chemical reaction that happens in our body.