Mitochondrial evolution

Abstract

Viewed through the lens of the genome it contains, the mitochondrion is of unquestioned bacterial ancestry, originating from within the bacterial phylum a-Proteobacteria (Alphaproteobacteria). Accordingly, the endosymbiont hypothesis-the idea that the mitochondrion evolved from a bacterial progenitor via symbiosis within an essentially eukaryotic host cell-has assumed the status of a theory. Yet mitochondrial genome evolution has taken radically different pathways in diverse eukaryotic lineages, and the organelle itself is increasingly viewed as a genetic and functional mosaic, with the bulk of the mitochondrial proteome having an evolutionary origin outside Alphaproteobacteria. New data continue to reshape our views regarding mitochondrial evolution, particularly raising the question of whether the mitochondrion originated after the eukaryotic cell arose, as assumed in the classical endosymbiont hypothesis, or whether this organelle had its beginning at the same time as the cell containing it. © 2012 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; all rights reserved.