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Updated: Sep 23, 2025

Visualization of ATP Synthase Dimers in Mitochondria by Electron Cryo-tomography
Published on: September 14, 2014
Beyond being an energy supplier, ATP synthase is a sculptor of mitochondrial cristae
Héctor Miranda-Astudillo1, Marcos Ostolga-Chavarría2, Pierre Cardol3
1Departamento de Biología Molecular y Biotecnología, Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.
Abstract:
Mitochondrial F1FO-ATP synthase plays a key role in cellular bioenergetics; this enzyme is present in all eukaryotic linages except in amitochondriate organisms. Despite its ancestral origin, traceable to the alpha proteobacterial endosymbiotic event, the actual structural diversity of these complexes, due to large differences in their polypeptide composition, reflects an important evolutionary divergence between eukaryotic lineages. We discuss the effect of these structural differences on the oligomerization of the complex and the shape of mitochondrial cristae.
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