Experiment
Godefroid Charbon
Transforming a bacterium into a neuron powerhouse
Associate Professor
University of Copenhagen
The project aims to identify environmental cues that favor the selection of poorly functioning mitochondria that carries mutations in their DNA. DNA mutations carried by mitochondria are commonly associated with neurologic diseases. Neurons can harbor a mix of wild type and mutated mitochondria.
The accumulation of certain mutations determines the severity of neurological disorders. How these mutations are selected despite the presence of several hundred copies of wild type DNA in an individual mitochondrion is not known. We will engineer a bactechondrion, a bacterium-mitochondrion hybrid. This model system will be used to find conditions that favor the selection of mutations.
