Mitochondria occupy a substantial portion of the cytoplasmic volume of eucaryotic cells, and they have been essential for the evolution of complex animals. Without mitochondria, present-day animal cells would be dependent on anaerobic glycolysis for all of their ATP. When glucose is converted to pyruvate by glycolysis, only a very small fraction of the total free energy potentially available from the glucose is released. In mitochondria, the metabolism of sugars is completed: the pyruvate is imported into the mitochondrion and oxidized by O2 to CO2 and H2O. This allows 15 times more ATP to be made than that produced by glycolysis alone.

Mitochondria are usually depicted as stiff, elongated cylinders with a diameter of 0.5–1 μm, resembling bacteria. Time-lapse microcinematography of living cells, however, shows that mitochondria are remarkably mobile and plastic organelles, constantly changing their shape (Figure 14-4) and even fusing with one another and then separating again. As they move about in the cytoplasm, they often seem to be associated with microtubules (Figure 14-5), which can determine the unique orientation and distribution of mitochondria in different types of cells. Thus, the mitochondria in some cells form long moving filaments or chains. In others they remain fixed in one position where they provide ATP directly to a site of unusually high ATP consumption—packed between adjacent myofibrils in a cardiac muscle cell, for example, or wrapped tightly around the flagellum in a sperm (Figure 14-6).

Figure 14-4. Mitochondrial plasticity.

Figure 14-4

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