Cellular and Molecular Biology of Mitochondria in Human Health and Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Apart from being energy-producing plants, mitochondria regulate cell differentiation, play a major role in the initiation and progression of cancer, are responsible for cell death, serve as a command post for immunity, contribute to the maintenance of body temperature, play a key role in the external environment and intrinsic stress responses, and are so deeply involved in the aging process that they can be said to be involved in every process. The two life forms, which began in symbiosis, make up a single, brilliantly integrated organism. However, from time to time, we can glimpse the selfish behavior of the little one in the dysfunction of disease, and we know that it has a vigorous survival strategy. Biology has long been described by information reduced to genes encoded in the nucleus and has not given much significance to the malfunction of mitochondria, which were originally a separate life form. Recent advances in mitochondrial biology have revealed a series of events in which mitochondrial function responds to instructions from the nuclear genome, leading to alterations in the phenotype. In this special issue, we would like to provide an editorial on the understanding of diseases with pathologies based on mitochondrial dysfunction and the potential of new therapeutic strategies by correcting mitochondrial function. It would be a great pleasure for the editors to highlight the possibility of a common approach of restoring mitochondrial function to diseases with completely different etiologies, such as cancer, infectious diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases, and diabetes, by providing a cross-sectional overview from the perspective of mitochondria. To this end, we sincerely hope to receive papers from researchers focusing on mitochondria in a variety of fields.

Prof. Dr. Satoshi Gojo
Guest Editor

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• mitochondria
• mitophagy
• oxidative phosphorylation
• apoptosis
• integrated stress response
• heteroplasmy
• calcium dynamics
• reactive oxygen species
• fusion/fission
• mitochondrial quality control