Cellular Energy – A billion years of separate inheritance.

The enzymes that carry out cellular respiration and photosynthesis are distributed across three entirely distinct and separately inherited genomes, yet eukaryotic health and fitness is critically dependent upon their successful interaction. Moreover, maternally inherited cytoplasmic genomes rarely undergo sexual recombination and exist in dozens to thousands of copies per cell, while corresponding nuclear genomes are bi-parentally inherited, one or more copies from each parent, via sexual reproduction. My research investigates how, in the face of these fundamentally different genetic systems, mitochondria and chloroplasts are able to successfully maintain the molecular machinery responsible for nearly the entire supply of cellular energy.