You think you your brain is filled up with useless facts from school? You think you would never NEED to know calculus or that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell?!
Well buckle up buddies. 'Cause this weeks fact is 100% all about some more useless shit which you can complain about later.
"The only things you HAVE to know is how to make enough of a living to stay alive and to get your taxes done.
All the fun parts of life are optional"
(Courtesy of Randall Munroe xkcd.com)
All the fun parts of life are optional"
(Courtesy of Randall Munroe xkcd.com)
Mitochondria ARE the powerhouse of the cell... but the epic facts don't just end there.
As you can see in the above image, these lil guys have membranes like car radiators. This is all about maximising membrane surface area and saving space. If you need to win at hide and go seek, I would recommend a similar strategy.
Well the mitrochondria has packed these membranes fill of proteins to perform various roles.
Say hello to your old friend, the electron transport chain.
These guys take your food, and use the energy from breaking down those chemical bonds to pump hydrogen across this membrane.
What we end up with is a very high concentration of hydrogen on one side, and none on the other. If you look at this picture, I think you'll under stand the gravity of this situation
(haha potential energy pun joke)
So what happens next?
The obvious, the flood gates are opened, and this is the part where we learn that mitochondria have LITERAL FUCKING TURBINES
inside their tiny membrane bits:
(This goes a million times faster in real life,
and knowing things go fast is always impressive, citation needed.)
and knowing things go fast is always impressive, citation needed.)
Basically, the little hydrogen bits (shiny tiny orange things coming from the bottom) spin the purple turbine rotor, which rotates the orange rotors, which have little hammers on top, where those green top bits take it in turn to get hit by the hammer as it rotates past.
Every time the hammer hits a green subunit, a molecule of ATP is made (large glowy orange bits).
ATP, or adenosine triphosphate to bitches who can't acronym, is like little cans of energy that every other protein in your cell uses to get shit done.
Furthermore , every cell in your body, is doing this. Right now.
Every cell has a solid handful of mitochondria.
What more, Mitochondria aren't really even part of 'us' - its generally accepted the the mitochondria were once bacteria, which were unsuccessfully gobbled up by other cells. These cellular living bacteria co-lived with their host cells for such a long time that they just started working together and evolving together.
That's right, this means all mitochondria have there own genetic code, which is technically separate from yours. (Although some mitochondrial proteins are made with your DNA, and transported in there!)
This can be handy, as you'll only ever inherit your mums mitochondria (Apart from the DNA package, all other the sperm bits get degraded after they enter the egg).
Now next time your boss asks you whether you did the thing, or your in a life or death situation that requires specialist knowledge that your not getting out of, or you need to pay your taxes, or cook to impress, or balance your bank account, or organise a trip overseas. You may be woefully unprepared - but at least you know that the
Mitochondria really ARE the powerhouses of the cell...
and they have little fucking turbines and shit.
and they have little fucking turbines and shit.
and that is fucking sweet.
If your interested in looking at a pretty 2 min vid about pretty mitochondria proteins, check this out. Lets be honest, if you got this far, you probably have the time.
Bonus knowledge drop: Some cell don't have mitochondria - plants have chloroplasts which do the same thing, but use sunlight to pump those proteins. Some weird organisms have things called hydrogenosomes too. Kinky!
WRWWWFOTW out.
