 Hey everybody, Dr. O. In this video I want to talk about the mitochondria, just a little bit more in detail mainly because it's the location of something we're going to cover a tremendous amount. We're talking about metabolism, right? We're going to talk about glycolysis and the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. Well, the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain take place here in the mitochondria. So first, here you see just in the context of an entire eukaryotic cell, bacteria don't have these mitochondria. They have the same enzymes, so many of them do, but they're right in the plasma membrane. It's kind of neat. But first of all, seeing a single mitochondria here, this is not going to happen very often. There are some cells that don't have mitochondria, like red blood cells, and you could actually argue they're not even cells. We'll cover that and we'll get the blood. But for example, like your cardiac, your heart muscle cells, 30% of the volume of the cells is going to be mitochondria and think about other muscle cells and things like that. So the amount of mitochondria in a cell tells you how much energy it needs to produce and use. So let's go ahead and take a look. So here we see an actual image of a mitochondria. So it is a double membrane organelle or a membrane bound organelle. So the outer membrane is just the packaging really, like kind of like the capsule around an organ. The inner membrane is where the business end occurs. So the inner membrane is going to have, as you can see here, the cristae, those are the, or cristae, those are the folds. And like everywhere else in the body, folds are used to increase surface area. Then you have the matrix, which is kind of the goopy substance, right? So the folds or the cristae of the inner membrane are where the actual enzymes are that generate ATP. As you can see here, the ATP synthase enzyme is the end of the line, the end of the electron transport system. So all those enzymes are going to be there. The matrix has enzymes that are going to remove carbon dioxide and generate a little bit of energy as well. So one neat thing though is the mitochondria does have its own DNA. So it also has its own ribosomes. So the ribosomes inside of mitochondria are the 7DS ribosomes, the same one as you see in bacteria. So we covered that somewhere else. But they do have their own DNA. I believe there's 13 genes that are still inside the mitochondria. This doesn't mean that they don't need the nucleus. The DNA, the genetic material coming from the nucleus is what powers the mitochondria. But they have their own DNA and it does play a role in producing protein enzymes, et cetera, that help generate energy. So what's interesting here is that the thinking is if we need to get these, if we can genetically engineer a human where these enzymes are inside the nucleus, they would be more protected because one of the big theories of aging is the mitochondrial theory of aging, which basically says that our mitochondria start to age and break down. And that's what leads to the rest of the aging process. So they're wondering, could we use some sort of cool genetic engineering trick like CRISPR to move these genes inside the nucleus where they'd be more protective? Don't know, but it's just kind of cool. So just so you know where the mitochondria fits. So they do have their own ribosomes, own DNA kind of cool. But I talked about the crease day and the matrix already. Where they fit is during our cellular respiration, during our aerobic respiration on metabolism, we have glycolysis. Glycolysis is an anaerobic process that occurs in the cytoplasm of the cell. But then glycolysis rips glucose in half, tears it in half, turning one glucose into two pyruvates. So pyruvate is actually what's absorbed by the mitochondria. And then it becomes acetyl-CoA, travels through the Krebs cycle, and then down the electron transport chain. So that just so you know where it fits in when we cover the metabolic pathways later. All right, I think that's all the important stuff here at the mitochondria, relatively short video. But you're going to hear a lot more about this organelle when we're talking about very complicated topics. I wanted to introduce it to you well. All right, have a wonderful day. Be blessed.