About ten quadrillion bacteria live inside you.
Two billion years ago they were free organisms. Today they sit in almost every one of your cells — and decide how awake you are, how fast you age, how clearly you can think.
This is about mitochondria.
You inherit them 100% from your mother.
An egg carries about a hundred thousand mitochondria. A sperm barely more than fifty. And even those get systematically destroyed at fertilisation.
Mechanismus
The mechanism is called paternal mitophagy: before the first cell division, the egg tags the father's mitochondria with ubiquitin, the proteasome system breaks them down.
Konsequenz
Consequence: your mitochondrial DNA is an unbroken maternal line — back through your mother, your grandmother, deep into prehistory. From this lineage, the common origin of all living humans can be reconstructed.
A double membrane, folded to the maximum.
Mitochondria have two membranes. The inner one folds into cristae — and only there sit the five complexes that harvest energy. Unfolded, a single heart-muscle mitochondrion's inner membrane reaches about one square metre of surface per gram of tissue.
The electron transport chain
Five protein complexes on the inner membrane. Four pass electrons forward while pumping protons outward — the fifth uses the resulting gradient to make ATP. Mechanically a turbine.
Passes electrons from NADH to ubiquinone. Pumps 4 protons.
Bridge to the citric acid cycle. Passes electrons but pumps no protons.
Q-cycle. Passes electrons to cytochrome c, pumps 4 protons.
Joins electrons with O₂ to form water. This is where almost all the oxygen you breathe gets consumed.
A turbine: the proton backflow rotates it at up to 150 revolutions per second. Three ATP per turn.
This machine is running in you right now. In total you produce roughly your body weight in ATP every day — and consume it just as fast.
Pull the levers.
Seven everyday levers. Each one touches a mechanism that has been studied for decades. Pull one and watch how the machine reacts — short term and over ten years.
Click a persona to jump into four real-life scenarios.
Respiratory-chain capacity, relative to the baseline of a healthy 35-year-old.
Mitochondria per cell, relative to baseline. Slower to change than OXPHOS, but more cumulative.
Share of intact mitochondrial DNA. Damage accumulates with age and chronic stress.
What would be measurable?
Five lab values that move along with the levers in your workshop. Three are clinical or research standard, two come from functional medicine and are labelled as such.
Cellular redox status. Low when respiratory-chain output is impaired. Mechanism solid; blood test clinically unusual, since tissue NAD ≠ blood NAD.
Routine clinical test. Elevated in mitochondrial dysfunction (e.g. MELAS). Strong evidence, but unspecific.
Stress signal from mitochondria. Research standard for diagnosing mitochondrial myopathies. In studies the best single marker for mito stress.
Oxidative damage to DNA, excreted in urine. Correlates with ROS load and chronic stress.
Electron shuttle from complex I/II to III. Serum CoQ10 mainly reflects lipid metabolism, not tissue concentration. Clinically relevant under statin therapy.
These values are not diagnostics. They show in which direction the levers would push the markers. For real symptoms, interpretation belongs in the hands of a physician.
Where it lights up first — and where it fades first.
Every organ has its own mitochondrial density. High density means: the organ benefits the most when the machine runs — and suffers the most when it doesn't. Click an organ in the silhouette.
Brighter dots = more active organs in your scenario
Heart
25–35% of cell volume is mitochondria — highest density of any organ after the retina. Beats 2.5 billion times in a lifetime. Mitochondrial weakness shows as reduced exertion capacity long before heart failure.
Six sections, calibrated against the literature. A first iteration — the ratios will be retuned against new studies over time.