Scientists have long thought that cells can’t
live without their powerhouses, but Anna Karnkowska and her team have disproven
this. They’ve found a single-celled organism, without these powerhouses, in the
guts of a chinchilla.
Simple vs. Complex
All living
things can be roughly divided into two groups; simple cells and complex cells. Bacteria
are made out of a simple cell, which is also called a prokaryotic cell. These
cells don’t have any specific parts which fill out specific functions. Everything
is just some sort of mush of things you can find inside a cell. The complex
cells, or eukaryotes, which animals, plants and fungi are made out of, on the
other hand, do have these specific parts. There are many different types of
these parts, which can perform many different functions. Plants use these parts
for photosynthesis for example, while animals use other parts to be able to
produce more energy. These parts are called mitochondria. Scientists have
thought for a long time that no complex cell could live without these
mitochondria. Like we can’t really live without our power plants, complex cells
can’t either. But this is proved wrong by Anna Karnkowska and her team.
Hiding in a chinchilla
They have
found a single-celled organism in the guts of the chinchilla of one of team
members, that doesn’t have mitochondria. This organism is called Monocercomonoides. There are many
organisms without mitochondria, but those are all prokaryotes, or simple cells.
The odd thing about Monocercomonoides is
that it has all the other traits of a complex cell. It has, for example, a specific
place to store its DNA, so it is a complex cell, or eukaryote. The researchers
also have already found an explanation for Monocercomonoides’s lack of mitochondria. Since it lives
inside the guts of a chinchilla, there are already plenty of nutrients around,
so the cell doesn’t need any fancy energy supply. And because it doesn’t need
it, the cell hasn’t.
Messed up definition
But what
does this mean for the complex cells? Most importantly, the definition of
eukaryotes, or complex cells, is strongly dependent on mitochondria. Before
this discovery, the definition of a eukaryote was ‘a cell that has mitochondria’,
which now isn’t correct anymore. “We overturn this definition.” said Anna
Karnkowska in Science. This once
again shows that science is constantly changing and is never truly finished.
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