Overview of Mitochondrial Bioenergetics

Abstract

Bioenergetic science started in the eighteenth century with the pioneer works by Joseph Priestley and Antoine de Lavoisier on photosynthesis and respiration, respectively. New developments were implemented by Pasteur in the 1860s with the description of fermentations associated with microorganisms, further documented by Buchner brothers who discovered that fermentations also occurred in cell extracts in the absence of living cells. In the beginning of the twentieth century, Harden and Young demonstrated that orthophosphate and other heat-resistant compounds (cozymase), later identified as NAD, ADP, and metal ions, were mandatory in the fermentation of glucose. The full glycolysis pathway has been detailed in the 1940s with the contributions of Embden, Meyeroff, Parnas, and Warburg, among others.

Studies on the citric acid cycle started in 1910 (Thunberg) and were elucidated by Krebs et al. in the 1940s.

Mitochondrial bioenergetics gained emphasis in the late 1940s and 1950s with the works of Lehninger, Racker, Chance, Boyer, Ernster, and Slater, among others. The prevalent “chemical coupling hypothesis” of energy conservation in oxidative phosphorylation was challenged and replaced by the “chemiosmotic hypothesis” originally formulated in the 1960s by Mitchell and later substantiated and extended to energy conservation in bacteria and chloroplasts, besides mitochondria, with clear-cut identification of molecular proton pumps.

After identification of most reactive mechanisms, emphasis has been directed to structure resolution of molecular complex clusters, e. g., cytochrome c oxidase, complex III, complex II, ATP synthase, photosystem I, photosynthetic water-splitting center, and energy collecting antennae of several photosynthetic systems.

Modern trends concern to the reactivity of radical and other active species in association with bioenergetic activities. A promising trend concentrates on the cell redox status quantified in terms of redox potentials.

In spite of significant development and advances of bioenergetic knowledge, major issues remain mainly related with poor experimental designs not representative of the real native cell conditions. Therefore, a major effort has to be implemented regarding direct observations in situ.