Congratulations, Monica! You continue to inspire 🌟

tagging @leeba.bsky.social!

This is the outcome of Leeba Chacko's PhD research - all credit to her (she also recently submitted her thesis - pictured below with her PhD hat). This work also included incredibly fruitful and fun collaborations with Hidenori (Tokushima U.), Richard (UNSW) and @wallaceucsf.bsky.social! (n/n)

In summary, we demonstrate a central role for mitochondrial activity in dictating cellular growth rates/kinetics and ensuring mitochondrial volume homeostasis. (6/n)

The prediction of this model was that cells that lacked mitochondrial activity would grow linearly, and indeed we saw that rho0 cells (without mtDNA) switched to linear growth! (5/n)

Both the cell size and mitochondrial volume grew exponentially during the cell cycle, but given our previous data, we asked if mitochondrial activity drove the cell's exponential growth - using quantitative modeling we found this was the case. (4/n)

We compared pairs of daughter cells that divided symmetrically but partitioned mitochondria asymmetrically - cells with fewer mitochondria grew slower. Those with more mitochondria grew faster. Both daughter cells eventually divided according to the 'sizer' mechanism, but at different times. (3/n)

At cell division, small newborn cells inherited fewer mitochondria from the mother, while larger received more. But by division, all cells ended up with the same mitochondrial volume! (2/n)