I'm Ryan Weaver (EEOB, Iowa State University). I am recruiting PhD. students to work on topics related to mitochondrial evolutionary bioenergetics. Potential projects include mitonuclear coevoution and the bioenergetic basis of pathogenicity of animal-infecting fungi, among others.

Here are the instructions I gave. I used the custom instructions section in GPT to try to control how it behaved. We used GPT3.5 since its free, but I think 4.0 would have performed better. GPT3.5 was kind of a pushover, confidently agreeing with incorrect answers and carried those mistakes forward

Note to self that if you give 54 students in your evolution class prompts to have ChatGPT create Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium problems to answer and have a conversation about, YOU will have to do 100s of HWE problems 🥲 #AcademicSky #evobio

In addition to clarifying presence/absence in some taxa, we found putative cases of horizontal AOX transfer from fungi and protists to some animal taxa. We’re working on the why, but the hgt AOX taxa tend to inhabit hypoxic environments, a potential role for AOX to maintain mito function.

AOX is an alternative to complex IV, which is a terminal oxidase. AOX provides metabolic flexibility for when conditions disrupt CIV function. E.g. hypoxia, redox stress. We show it is present in extant proteobacteria, the group thought to be the source of mitos in eukaryotes, but not other bacteria

We have a new paper out on the taxonomic distribution of an understudied aspect of mitochondrial physiology, the alternative oxidase AOX.
authors.elsevier.com/c/1hbVJ_7h4U...

The roles mitos play depend ultimately on managing electron flow through the electron transport system to reduce O2 to H2O.