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M. J. Friedrich

JAMA. 2004;291:679-681.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

New Orleans—If ATP is the fuel that keeps the cellular engine running, mitochondria are the gas stations open all night for service. But these "powerhouses of the cell" have a dark side. Provoked by stressful conditions, mitochondria—semiautonomous organelles that maintain their own genome and life cycle—can be transformed from beneficent energy suppliers into ticking time bombs capable of triggering events that lead to cell damage and death.

New research is providing insights into the role that mitochondria play in neurological disease and injury. This color-enhanced micrograph shows a nerve cell in culture expressing a mitochondrially-targeted yellow fluorescent protein; the nucleus of the cell is stained red. (Photo credit: Gordon Rintoul, PhD, and Ian Reynolds, PhD)

Mitochondria in brain cells are subject to damage from various agents, including toxic stimuli and inflammatory mediators. In some cases, the cell loss that occurs in neurological diseases and injuries can . . . [Full Text of this Article]