For decades, biologists assumed a cell’s energy simply diffused to wherever it was needed. It turns out the most important destination of all has a private delivery line.

An international team of scientists led by Dr. Ivan Menendez-Montes, assistant professor at the University of Arizona, and Dr. Hesham A. Sadek, director of the Sarver Heart Center at the University of Arizona and group leader at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC), has uncovered a previously unknown mechanism through which mitochondria directly supply energy to the cell nucleus.

Published in Nature, their study demonstrates that mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, physically dock at the control center of the cell—the nucleus—through its main gate—the nuclear pore complexes. This creates a highly efficient system for delivering energy and metabolites directly into the nucleus.