Mitochondrial Dynamics in the Regulation of Nutrient Utilization and Energy Expenditure. Thiamine HDT significance.
2013.
Excerpts:
Mitochondria have a very active social life style involving frequent fusion and fission events. Mitochondria that lose their ability to properly respire become excluded from the networking population and will be consumed by the cellular equivalent of a lion, the autophagosome. This forms a pathway of quality control.
However, recent studies suggest that arrest of mitochondrial fusion at the cellular level, also termed “fragmentation”, is playing a role in the adaptation to excess nutrient environment. Recognizing that excess nutrient environment places mitochondria in a biological conflict of interest may help understanding the link between metabolic and aging associated conditions.
While aging involves insufficiency of mitochondrial quality control and turnover mechanisms (such as autophagy), diabetes and obesity are influenced by the ability of the organism to deal with excess nutrient environment.
The observation that both conditions are impacted by the duration of exposure to excess nutrient environment raises the question: Are the tasks of handling nutrients in excess and maintaining quality control ever in conflict?
In this review, we discuss evidence to support a hypothesis that adaptation to excess nutrient environment interferes with quality control functions and, as a result, affects mitochondrial function in a magnitude that reflects the duration to which the organism was exposed to excess nutrient environment.
