Lena Pernas is in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, ...

I always wanted to understand life. What moves us? What allows us to heal and thrive? And what goes wrong when we get sick or when we eventually stop breathing and die? My search for answers to these ...

Your brain is a metabolically fierce organ, punching way above its weight of two pounds to consume 20 to 25 percent of the body’s fuel supply. The brain’s energy-making machinery, centered in ...

It’s one of the basic tenets of biology: We get our DNA from our mom and our dad. But one notable exception has perplexed scientists for decades: Most animals, including humans, inherit the DNA inside ...

Everything the brain does—from storing memories to interpreting sights to regulating emotions—requires energy, all produced by cellular organelles called mitochondria. However, surprisingly little is ...

The accumulating evidence that metabolic factors play a significant role in the many symptoms of mental disorders opens a whole new approach to treatment. Targeting mitochondrial function promises to ...

Mitochondria are like subcontractors that do jobs for your cells. In fact, scientists believe these organelles were once ...