by the research group of Professor Nils-Göran Larsson, at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet, shows that so-called supercomplexes have no major role in cellular energy production and that altered levels therefore are unlikely to affect physiology and disease.
The food we eat is degraded by metabolism and the energy harvested by mitochondria. During metabolism, the nutrients we ingest are broken down and electrons are harvested and used by mitochondria to produce the cellular energy currency, called ATP. The production of ATP depends on a very complicated enzyme system called the. The respiratory chain consists of several large protein complexes which in turn can form higher-order complexes, so-called respiratory chain supercomplexes.
"The role of the supercomplexes has been intensively debated for decades and we have addressed this question by creating a very powerful mouse model which contains a normal amount of fully functional respiratory chain complexes, that cannot interact to form supercomplexes.
"Many reports argue that respiratory chain supercomplexes are important in a wide range of physiological processes and human diseases, like diabetes, metabolic disease, heart failure, and cancer. Manipulation of supercomplex formation has been suggested as a new way to treat cancer and metabolic diseases. Our results show that such approaches are unlikely to succeed and that supercomplex formation has no major effect on cellular energy homeostasis," says Nils-Göran Larsson.