Topic Overview:

The dynamic coordination of converting food to energy, to cellular building blocks, or to intracellular signals is a key to the origin of multicellular organisms and central to cell specialization. Many of these processes occur in and are coordinated by mitochondria. Mitochondria are wonderfully unique organelles, as they still contain their own ancestral genome, which is essential for mitochondrial respiratory function. Kaufman’s talk will present new discoveries made by his group and others regarding the biology of this genome and its role in health and disease.