Mitochondrion model

Several experimental observations have linked mitochondrial energy production to structural rearrangements of the membranes in the organelle. A direct validation of this hypothesis is not easy to provide because on the one hand, these studies rely on electron tomography (ET) to reveal the three-dimensional structure but on the other hand ET only gives static and no dynamic information. To address this question, we combined realistic morphologies reconstructed from electron microscopy tomograms with Markov state transition models to describe the molecular dynamics of the main ATP production components.

This work was done as part of my PhD project with Prof. Alexander Skupin as my supervisor, and in collaboration with Mark Ellisman’s lab at UCSD and Sejnowski’s Lab at Salk, with the support of the Luxembourg National Research Fund in the frame of a PhD Grant to me.

Several publications derived form this work:

• Mitochondrial morphology provides a mechanism for energy buffering at synapses

• Morphological principles of neuronal mitochondria

• Cristae formation is a mechanical buckling event controlled by the inner membrane lipidome

• Mitochondrial morphology governs ATP production rate