It seems an age since Lynn Margulis and her supporters fought bitterly for the notion that mitochondria were once free living organisms now engulfed and residing as organelles in every eukaryote cell
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In the past, fifty years ago until quite recently, mitochondria were perceived as ‘enslaved’, de-individualised, genetically stripped out, aerobic power houses of a cell under the master control of the genetic hegemony … namely the nucleus. This picture is taught to students worldwide and invariably biological articles and text books referring to mitochondria usually begin with a weak entree: ‘these tiny structures are the power house of the cell’ or some such thing and ends there. The tiny batteries have a job and carry it out under the auspices of the nucleus.
Mitochondria traditionally pay second fiddle to the nucleus in the cell which is regarded as containing the blueprints for all life stored in DNA-based code. The tyranny of this mega-repository of genetic information, has been reinforced in our minds over the years by Dawkins’ notion of the ‘selfish-gene’. The survival of the replicating ‘gene’ units being the uber-determinant of the variety of creatures ( or gene-depositories) we see today. I have no quarrel with the logic of this thesis, save that emotionally, irrationally some will say, on my part the model’s lack of intelligence is uninspiring. I am no creationist apostle of ‘intelligent design’ , on the contrary, but even so the gnostic in me seeks more!
In the current world of AI though, we are coming to understand a wider notion of intelligence ( including an ironic thumbs up for machine intelligence from Dawkins himself). So this is where I wish to start this essay: mitochondrial intelligence.
In 1995 Hideak Sena published a sci-fi horror book, in Japanese, that had as its conceit that mitochondria were intelligent parasites living in an intracellular ecosystem who controlled the fate of its organism ( in the book humans are the organism) and which could communicate with the outside world. Amongst other things they could coordinate death of the organism, influence its longevity and even, by collective synchronous discharge of electrical potential, cause spontaneous combustion! I really like that idea.
Far fetched? Yes quite a bit but, less so today.
Mitochondria are not the slave ‘batteries’ of the cell. They may have only a few genes inside the free-radical furnace that is the interior of the mitochondrion, but they do have an active intracellular retrograde-signalling life, communicating with their legacy and adopted genes in the nucleus, as well as modifying the epigenetic profile of the cell: the latter being in response to environmental ( ie outside the cell) cues. And of the latter comes communication. Mitochondria we now know, can ‘see-feel’ and react directly to the world outside of the body as the result of penetrating NIR radiation and additionally host of penetration electromagnetic frequencies from low to high. By ‘react’ I mean power up, power down, divide, die, and modify epigenes.
Furthermore, mitochondria can be ‘conditioned’ intracellularly through oxidative hermeneutic stresses created by the larger organism. Examples of this would be extreme activity or response to acute infection.
In short, mitochondria are genetically active, well connected to the data-base and ‘know’ what’s going on outside their cellular prison and can react accordingly.
Mitochondria have the power of life and death of their host cell. Killing their host is routine and necessary. The process is called apoptosis. A cascade of events initiated by mitochondria kills a cell when variously: the cell is senescent and damaged; when viruses have invaded and threaten to reproduce within the cell and when a cell goes rogue, transforming into a cancer cell. As an aside it is no surprise then that the first job of a invading virus or emerging cancerous cell is to switch off the mitochondria … if they can.
Mitochondria: age; die; reproduce by fission; fuse together (for collective electrolytic capacity and power storage during cell division when feeding is not possible); split apart and can move rapidly throughout the cell on the cytoskeleton gel/sol highways to sites of high energy demand, or even to meet foreign-body intruders … a busy life.
But are mitochondria intelligent?
Here we need to move to more modern concepts of intelligence. Artificial Intelligence development has taught us a few fundamentals. Call these: storage, comms, and computing.. Do mitochondria and their intracellular ecosystem infrastructure have these fundamentals?
Yes they do. Firstly, the DNA of the nucleus and epigenetic loops store decent amounts of information, upwards of IGb in conventional computing language. Secondly mitochondria oscillate at approx 10-100 MHz ( the so called New Agers’ frequencies) and are capable of resonant interaction with the electromagnetic spectrum right through to the kilo, mega and terra hertz. In other word ‘communication’ is quite possible. Oscillators are communicators .. think anything from a drum to a loudspeaker for an analogy.
Thirdly, what about computing power? Mitochondria are electrical devices analogous to capacitors which enable charge separation ( high- low states, ie binary) and transport electrons through proteins capable of quantum tunnelling or in computer speak: very fast data buses and quantum wires.. Superposition quantum states are possible too according to Roger Penrose in 1998, maintained within the cytoskeleton using tubulin proteins to stabilise them.
To cut a long theory short, the intracellular ecosystem contains the wherewithal to maintain a non-algorithmic, quantum computing state of consciousness, fully integrated with the ‘world’ of electromagnetism and gravity i.e. Wiitengstein's the ‘World’.
In summary, in this essay the cell is a conscious entity, and conscious because a dumb legacy infrastructure was leveraged by energetic, entropy-defying guests, the mitochondria.
The intelligence and consciousness of the cell is innate and, to multicellular creatures with algorithmic-driven nervous systems, it is inaccessible. Maybe the next generation of machine intelligence will give us insights into this world but for now only the minds of cosmic physicists such as Professor Pensose can think with a level of abstraction denied to the likes of me.
To finish, my picture of the cell puts the engulfing adoption and subjugation of mitochondria by a larger phagocytic host rather into reverse … as an invasion. Free living, cell penetrating, bacteria-like infectors, invaders, coming to stay, liking what they found and steadily building a super-creature we know as the eukaryote cell. Pure science fiction as Margulis was told way back.
