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Editor-in-Chief:
K.K. Singh, Mitochondrion Editorial Office, Johns Hopkins Oncology
Center, Bunting-Blaustein Cancer Research Building, 1650 Orleans Street,
Room 1-143, Baltimore, MD 21231-1000, USA. Email: singhke@jhmi.edu,
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Mitochondrial
me and the Mitochondrion journal (editorial)
I am intimately involved, and obliged to do a great deal of essential
work for my mitochondria. My nuclei code out the outer membranes of
each, and a good many of the enzymes attached to the cristae must
be synthesized by me. Each of them, by all accounts, makes only enough
of its own materials to get along on, and the rest must come from
me. And I am the one who has to do the worrying.
Now that I know about the situation, I can find all kinds of things
to worry about. Viruses, for example. If my organelles are really
symbiotic bacteria, colonizing me, what's to prevent them from catching
a virus, or if they have such a thing as lysogeny, from conveying
a phage to other organelles? Then there is the question of my estate.
Do my mitochondria all die with me, or did my children get some of
mine along with their mother's; this sort of thing should not worry
me, I know, but it does.
From Lives of a Cell (Thomas, 1974).
This worry about mitochondria has been growing because the last decade
has witnessed a steady growth in the list of diseases associated with
mitochondria.
Mitochondrial dysfunction has been found in diseases as diverse as
cancer, migraine, infertility, diabetes, heart diseases, blindness,
deafness, kidney disease, liver disease, stroke and the toxicity of
HIV drugs.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is also associated with aging and neurodegenerative
diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's dementia. Thus mitochondria
appears to be the central players in many diseases that can affect
any organ, at any age.
The field of mitochondria is one of the fastest growing disciplines
in biomedicine. In the past decade more than 26,000 articles on mitochondria
were published in over 1000 scientific journals. I believe that the
mitochondrial community will be served better by a good solid journal
integrating all aspects of research on mitochondria. So, it is appropriate
to launch Mitochondrion, a new journal that will provide a common
platform for scientific research on mitochondria. Mitochondrion is
a bimonthly peerreviewed research journal for `mitochondriacs' and
by `mitochondriacs' working on different aspects of mitochondria throughout
the world. The scope of this journal is broad, from reporting on the
basic science of mitochondria in all model systems to reporting on
pathology and clinical aspects of mitochondrial diseases. The journal
welcomes articles for publication by investigators working in diverse
disciplines such as aging, cancer, biophysics, biochemistry, cell
biology, evolution, genetics, molecular biology, neurobiology, pharmacology,
plant biology, program cell death, toxicology, and clinical aspects
of mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondrion is the official journal of
the newly formed Mitochondria Research Society, established to deal
with new and emerging diseases of mitochondria. Mitochondrion should
provide a high visibility forum for combating new mitochondrial diseases.
The field of mitochondria has been driven by fundamentally interesting
questions. These include (to name a few): how did mitochondria evolve;
how do mitochondria produce energy; and how are mitochondria formed
(biogenesis)? Crystal structures of multisubunit complex II, III IV
and V have allowed the understanding of structure and function relationship.
What are the proteins that are encoded by mitochondrial genome? How
mitochondrial genes are transcribed? How the mitochondrial genome
is replicated? What the consequences of mitochondrial genome mutations
in diseases are? How programmed cell death (apoptosis) is regulated?
What happens to mitochondria when we age? The basic understanding
of mitochondria has also contributed to anthropological and forensic
analysis and therapy of cancer.
Several questions remain to be answered and this has been elegantly
brought to notice by Immo Schef¯er in the following review summarizing
a century of mitochondrial research. The completion of the human genome
project and soon the knowledge of every base pair in existence will
add to the field of mitochondria.
Expansion of the field can be anticipated by technologies such as
the SAGE and cDNA micro arrays.
It is our goal to provide a rapid and dramatic advancement in our
understanding of the basic science of mitochondria, mitochondrial
pathology and in badly needed therapies for mitochondrial diseases.
I invite you to submit your research articles to Mitochondrion and
join us to help make this journal the best journal on mitochondria.
Reference
Thomas, L., 1974. Organelles as organisms. In: The Lives of a Cell,
Viking Press, New York, p. 72.
Keshav K. Singh,
Editor-in-Chief
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