Lecture 11

Mitochondria and Chloroplasts were once free living prokaryotes. It takes roughly 3000 proteins for our mitochondria to work and 3000 for chloroplasts and chlamy. 95% of them are encoded for by the nucleus. Lateral gene transfer: Movement of genes to the nucleus for the coordination of cell function. (Animal cell may have 200 mitochondria so you don’t want them all doing what they want). Nucleus is a way to stabilize and control.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS)

You can get a partially reduced form of oxygen which is a superoxide Hydrogen Peroxide which can rip electrons away from things. Lots of oxygen around so it’s inevitable that all cells will produce some kind of superoxide or hydrogen peroxide.

Partial Reduction (You haven’t reached H2O yet, very reactive). O2 to 2H2O takes 4 Electrons

Huge amounts of oxygen are being diffused into the mitochondria, the chloroplast is making oxygen and you have ETC. You have electrons, oxygen, and genetic material. It makes no sense to keep valuable genetic material being kept where reactive oxygen is being made. The reason the genes are moved is to get them away from the reactive oxygen to move them away from the ETCs.

(Haffie, not because of this)

It would be better if genes moved off to the nucleus because genes in the nucleus can undergo sexual recombination which generates variation. The nuclear genome can get quite large and genes can duplicate, functions become more diverge and you can become more complex if genes move into the nucleus. Only some genes code for proteins but a lot of genes can code for tRNA, mRNA, RNA etc…

Elysia

Prokaryotic system inside of a plant organelle inside of an organelle (Russian Doll).