[Pharmacist]

Hi all , I’m 1st year pharmacy student and I’m facing difficulties with Biochemistry !
In fact I have 3 questions I don’t know how to answer it :
1-   How can the mitochondria be involved in an inherited disorder?
2-   What are the major roles of mitochondria in cellular biochemistry?
3-   Dysfunction of which mitochondrial components might affect the eye?  Of the mitochondria you think could be responsible and possible mechanisms by which they could affect the eye.

I need to do research about mitochondria and inherited disease and I feel frustrated because I didn’t find any good or scientific answers .
Regards,
Pharmacist

[JGK]

Funny, I typed, inherited disease mitochondria, into google and got a lot of relavent websites (after ignoring wikipedia).

You can then use information from these general sites to further refine your searches.

[Yggdrasil]

Although textbooks all call the mitochondria the "powerhouse of the cell," its roles go beyond simply generating energy.  Mitochondria play an important role in sensing the health of the cell and mitochondrial dysfunction can lead to programmed cell death (apoptosis).  Because of its role in apoptosis, mitochondrial dysfunction has been implicated in numerous diseases.  One example is Parkinson's disease.  When researchers tried to identify the mutation that causes an inherited form of the disease, they found that the mutation resides in a protein that resides in the mitochondria.