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Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 11, page 599 (2010) Cite this article

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Mitochondria are made up of specialized regions, including the outer membrane, intermembrane space, inner membrane and matrix. This enables their involvement in cellular processes such as energy production, signalling and cell death. On page 621 Tait and Green focus on the mitochondrial outer membrane and discuss how its permeabilization leads to the release of pro-apoptotic proteins from the intermembrane space — the crucial caspase activation event in the mitochondrial apoptotic pathway. Thus, the integrity of this membrane is highly controlled, primarily through interactions between pro- and anti-apoptotic B cell lymphoma 2 proteins.

To carry out their cellular functions, proteins also need to get into different mitochondrial compartments. On page 655, Schmidt, Pfanner and Meisinger describe how proteomic studies have identified numerous new transport components and pathways for mitochondrial protein import and revealed that protein translocases are connected to cellular machineries that function in bioenergetics and mitochondrial morphology. Fagarasanu, Mast, Knoblach and Rachubinski draw parallels to mitochondria on page 644 as they discuss the molecular mechanisms of organelle inheritance based on data from studying peroxisomes in yeast.

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From the editors.Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 11, 599 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm2968

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