Once they were free-living bacteria, then they hijacked complex cells, now it turns out they have a hand in everything from memory and ageing to obesity
YOU'VE got aliens inside you. It sounds crazy, and for nearly a century science steadfastly refused to believe it. Mitochondria, tiny bodies that swarm inside almost every one of our cells and supply them with power, are actually descendants of a separate life form: a free-living bacterium probably not unlike many of the little terrors that surround us today.
Although the idea of this merger is now widely accepted, it continues to be seen through biased eyes. The hapless mitochondrial ancestor was enslaved, so the story goes, its once proud genome reduced to a few genes and its job limited to the provision of energy. Autonomy? Long gone. It's as if we were trying to pretend this ...
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