The History of Energy Production in the Organism

At some point (1.5 billion years ago) out of necessity for survival, smaller bacteria penetrated the interior of larger ones and started to produce energy for them until today, and these smaller bacteria are today the mitochondria of animal cells.

Mitochondria are very small organelles that can be found by the thousands in cells. The number of mitochondria in each cell depends on the role that each cell has to play in the body. If the cell's purpose is to transmit a nerve impulse then that cell will have fewer mitochondria than a muscle cell that needs a lot more energy to perform its function. If a cell cannot get enough energy to survive, more mitochondria can be created. Eventually mitochondria can grow, move, divide and combine with other mitochondria. However, this fact of the mitochondria activity that seems beneficial includes a great paradox, that the greater the number of mitochondria inside the cells, the lower the life expectancy of the animal species in question, perhaps due to the fact that the mitochondria is also the largest generator of free radicals in the body.

This paradox of mitochondria being the generators of energy for the organism and at the same time being the largest generators of free radicals will be the main subject addressed in this book so that it is possible to understand how the organism makes errors of metabolism that can persist throughout the chronological existence of living beings and extend to future generations. Mitochondria transform resources from food and respiration into energy and a failure in this mechanism causes a deficient production of energy. Mitochondria capture oxygen that travels a path from the environment through the bloodstream, through the lungs and into the cells where it is used for energy production. And the mitochondria that starts cellular activity providing it with energy. Mitochondria is the only part of the body considered by most scientists to be not of the human species because the DNA found inside is similar to the DNA of a bacterium and not to human DNA. Studies on the genetic sequencing of mitochondrial DNA prove the theory of the bacterial origin of mitochondria. They are responsible for transferring information to the rest of the cell and thus organizing its function. Human cells contain thousands of mitochondria and thousands of copies of the mitochondrial genome. mitochondrial originates exclusively from maternal inheritance. Sperm cells do not contribute their mitochondrial genome to the formation of the cell that will give rise to the embryo. Then, during the fertilization of the egg by the sperm, the sperm when entering the egg does not include its own mitochondria in this process and the newly formed embryo will have only mitochondria of maternal origin. The mitochondria divides independently of the rest of the cell, reinforcing the thesis of its ancestral origin as a bacterium, currently proven by the genetic sequencing of mitochondrial DNA. Who supplies the raw material for the mitochondria to generate this energy is the environment, or better said, the nutrients in the food, the oxygen in the atmospheric air and even some share of the energy provided by solar radiation.

So that we can understand well the function of mitochondria in the balance of energy in the body, it is interesting that we understand the particularities such as the work of the body in an attempt to maintain a neutral pH in the bloodstream.