Trans-mitochondrial coordination of cristae at regulated membrane junctions

Martin Picard, Meagan J. McManus, György Csordás, Péter Várnai, Gerald W. Dorn, Dewight Williams, György Hajnóczky and Douglas C. Wallace ()
Additional contact information
Martin Picard: Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania
Meagan J. McManus: Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania
György Csordás: MitoCare Center, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University
Péter Várnai: Semmelweis University
Gerald W. Dorn: Center for Pharmacogenomics, Washington University School of Medicine
Dewight Williams: Penn EM Resource Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania
György Hajnóczky: MitoCare Center, Anatomy and Cell Biology, Thomas Jefferson University
Douglas C. Wallace: Center for Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Reminiscent of bacterial quorum sensing, mammalian mitochondria participate in inter-organelle communication. However, physical structures that enhance or enable interactions between mitochondria have not been defined. Here we report that adjacent mitochondria exhibit coordination of inner mitochondrial membrane cristae at inter-mitochondrial junctions (IMJs). These electron-dense structures are conserved across species, resistant to genetic disruption of cristae organization, dynamically modulated by mitochondrial bioenergetics, independent of known inter-mitochondrial tethering proteins mitofusins and rapidly induced by the stable rapprochement of organelles via inducible synthetic linker technology. At the associated junctions, the cristae of adjacent mitochondria form parallel arrays perpendicular to the IMJ, consistent with a role in electrochemical coupling. These IMJs and associated cristae arrays may provide the structural basis to enhance the propagation of intracellular bioenergetic and apoptotic waves through mitochondrial networks within cells.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7259 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7259

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7259

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().