Structure and mechanism of mitochondrial electron transport chain

Respiration is one of the most vital and basic features of living organisms. In mammals, respiration is accomplished by respiratory chain complexes located on the mitochondrial inner membrane. In the past century, scientists put tremendous efforts in understanding these complexes, but failed to solve the high resolution structure until recently. In 2016, three research groups reported the structure of respiratory chain supercomplex from different species, and fortunately the structure solved by our group has the highest resolution. In this review, we will compare the recently solved structures of respirasome, probe into the relationship between cristae shape and respiratory chain organization, and discuss the highly disputed issues afterwards. Besides, our group reported the first high resolution structure of respirasome and medium resolution structure of megacomplex from cultured human cells this year. Definitely, these supercomplex structures will provide precious information for conquering the mitochondrial malfunction diseases.