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What Makes Life Tick? Mitochondria May Keep Time for Cells | Quanta Magazine

Quanta Magazine
Summary
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89% Informative

What sets the tempo of an organism’s growth has remained a mystery.

Mice and humans use the same sets of genes to create neurons and build spines.

But the timing of when those genes are active is different, and it's unclear why that's so.

New explanations for what makes life tick emerging from innovations.

Two research groups found that basic molecular processes in the cell stay on beat with the pace of development.

In 2020 , two research groups — one led by Miki Ebisuya at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Barcelona and the other by James Briscoe at the Francis Crick Institute in London — independently discovered that in each cell, a metronome was ticking away.

The clock, then, must stem from a mechanism that sets the pace of biochemical reactions across species.

Teresa Rayon wanted to uncover its origins when she watched motor neurons differentiate in her London laboratory.

She genetically engineered developing mouse and human neurons to express fluorescent protein, which glows brightly when excited by a laser at the right wavelength.

VR Score

94

Informative language

95

Neutral language

49

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

57

Offensive language

not offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

not detected

Time-value

long-living

External references

24

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