Mitochondria Transplantation Between Living Cells
Time-lapse image series of a single transplanted mitochondrion
News Release, World Mitochondria Society, Berlin - Germany – April 6, 2022
Mitochondria and the complex endomembrane system are hallmarks of eukaryotic cells. To date, it has been difficult to manipulate organelle structures within single live cells.
Gäbelein et al, developed a FluidFM-based approach to extract, inject, and transplant organelles from and into living cells with subcellular spatial resolution. The technology combines atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy, and nanofluidics to achieve force and volume control with real-time inspection.
They developed dedicated probes that allow minimally invasive entry into cells and optimized fluid flow to extract specific organelles. When extracting single or a defined number of mitochondria, their morphology transforms into a pearls-on-a-string phenotype due to locally applied fluidic forces. They show that the induced transition is calcium independent and results in isolated, intact mitochondria.
Upon cell-to-cell transplantation, the transferred mitochondria fuse to the host cells mitochondrial network. Transplantation of healthy and drug-impaired mitochondria into primary keratinocytes allowed monitoring of mitochondrial subpopulation rescue. Fusion with the mitochondrial network of recipient cells occurred 20 minutes after transplantation and continued for over 16 hours. After transfer of mitochondria and cell propagation over generations, donor mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was replicated in recipient cells without the need for selection pressure.
The approach opens new prospects for the study of organelle physiology and homeostasis, but also for therapy, mechanobiology, and synthetic biology.
In Targeting Mitochondria 2022, a whole session will be focused on Mitochondria Transplantation and Transfer. Professional speakers like Dr. James McCully will be sharing their most recent work in this field of study.
Remember that you too can share your recent reasearch on this topic by submitting your abstract.
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Targeting Mitochondria 2022 Congress
October 26-28, 2022 - Berlin, Germany
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