{"id":99855,"date":"2019-12-17T14:46:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T22:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/mitochondria-are-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-cellular-stress"},"modified":"2019-12-17T14:46:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T22:46:19","slug":"mitochondria-are-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-cellular-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/mitochondria-are-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-cellular-stress","title":{"rendered":"Mitochondria are the \u2018canary in the coal mine\u2019 for cellular stress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mitochondria-are-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-cellular-stress.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mitochondria, tiny structures present in most cells, are known for their energy-generating machinery. Now, Salk researchers have discovered a new function of mitochondria: they set off molecular alarms when cells are exposed to stress or chemicals that can damage DNA, such as chemotherapy. The results, published online in <em>Nature Metabolism<\/em> on December 9, 2019, could lead to new cancer treatments that prevent tumors from becoming resistant to chemotherapy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMitochondria are acting as a first line of defense in sensing DNA stress. The mitochondria tell the rest of the cell, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m under attack, you better protect yourself,\u2019\u201d says Gerald Shadel, a professor in Salk\u2019s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and the Audrey Geisel Chair in Biomedical Science.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the DNA that a cell needs to function is found inside the cell\u2019s nucleus, packaged in chromosomes and inherited from both parents. But mitochondria each contain their own small circles of DNA (called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA), passed only from a mother to her offspring. And most cells contain hundreds \u2014 or even thousands \u2014 of mitochondria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mitochondria, tiny structures present in most cells, are known for their energy-generating machinery. Now, Salk researchers have discovered a new function of mitochondria: they set off molecular alarms when cells are exposed to stress or chemicals that can damage DNA, such as chemotherapy. The results, published online in Nature Metabolism on December 9, 2019, could [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}