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Episode 4.3 · 23 min

Where Mitochondria Came From

The ancient partnership between an archaeon and a bacterium that gave rise to mitochondria, explored through living relatives, genomes, and competing models of the merger.

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Visual credits

11 sources

Visual sources include third-party material incorporated into custom animations. License information is reproduced from source records; an unrecorded license does not mean a work is public domain.

  • Mitochondrial dynamics in a MEF cell

    Böhler P, Stuhldreier F, Anand R, Kondadi AK, Schlütermann D, Berleth N, Deitersen J, Wallot-Hieke N, Wu W, Frank M, Niemann H, Wesbuer E, Barbian A, Luyten T, Parys JB, Weidtkamp-Peters S, Borchardt A, Reichert AS, Peña-Blanco A, García-Sáez AJ, Itskanov S, van der Bliek AM, Proksch P, Wesselborg S, Stork B. (2018). " The mycotoxin phomoxanthone A disturbs the form and function of the inner mitochondrial membrane ". Cell Death & Disease 9 (3): e286. DOI : 10.1038/s41419-018-0312-8 .

    View original source ↗CC BY 4.0

  • Mitochondria, mammalian lung - TEM

    Louisa Howard

    View original source ↗Public domain

    Incorporated into an explanatory animation; presentation may include cropping, labels and overlays.

  • Journal.pbio.0050126.g001

    J. White and N. Moran, University of Arizona

    View original source ↗CC BY 2.5

  • Promethearchaeum syntrophicum SEM Cryo-EM

    Hiroyuki Imachi, Masaru K. Nobu,Nozomi Nakahara,Yuki Morono, Miyuki Ogawara, Yoshihiro Takaki, Yoshinori Takano, Katsuyuki Uematsu, Tetsuro Ikuta, Motoo Ito, Yohei Matsui, Masayuki Miyazaki, Kazuyoshi Murata, Yumi Saito, Sanae Sakai, Chihong Song, Eiji Tasumi, Yuko Yamanaka, Takashi Yamaguchi, Yoichi Kamagata, Hideyuki Tamaki, and Ken Takai

    View original source ↗CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Promethearchaeum syntrophicum

    Hiroyuki Imachi, Masaru K. Nobu,Nozomi Nakahara,Yuki Morono, Miyuki Ogawara, Yoshihiro Takaki, Yoshinori Takano, Katsuyuki Uematsu, Tetsuro Ikuta, Motoo Ito, Yohei Matsui, Masayuki Miyazaki, Kazuyoshi Murata, Yumi Saito, Sanae Sakai, Chihong Song, Eiji Tasumi, Yuko Yamanaka, Takashi Yamaguchi, Yoichi Kamagata, Hideyuki Tamaki, and Ken Takai

    View original source ↗CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Actin cytoskeleton in an Asgard archaeon — Figure 5a

    Thiago Rodrigues-Oliveira, Florian Wollweber, Rafael I. Ponce-Toledo, Jingwei Xu, Simon K.-M. R. Rittmann, Andreas Klingl, Martin Pilhofer and Christa Schleper

    View original source ↗CC BY 4.0

    Panel a cropped from Figure 5; presented within an explanatory animation.

  • Schleper Lab Vienna - The growth and retraction of appendages in the Asgard archaeon Lokiar...

    Schleper Lab Vienna

    View original source ↗License not recorded

  • Multicolor fluorescence image of living HeLa cells

    8x57is

    View original source ↗CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Red blood cells (2)

    Scootdive ( talk · contribs )

    View original source ↗CC BY-SA 3.0

    Incorporated into an explanatory animation; presentation may include cropping, labels and overlays.

  • Колония сувоек и инфузории туфельки

    Alexander Klepnev

    View original source ↗CC BY 4.0

  • Scientific figure · source page 9

    Emmanuelle J. Javaux, Andrew H. Knoll, and Malcolm R. Walter

    View original source ↗Copyrighted material — used for documentary commentary

    Figure or page excerpt cropped from the source publication.

    Editorial use; no open license asserted.

Research references

Selected sources from the episode’s research and scientific figures.

  1. article/PMC ↗
  2. article ↗
  3. bioRxiv 2025.02.26.640444v1 ↗
  4. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.03.041 ↗
  5. MitoCarta3.0 ↗
  6. Wikimedia Commons: *Promethearchaeum syntrophicum* SEM ↗
  7. Wikimedia Commons file: “Mitochondria, mammalian lung – TEM” ↗
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  36. https://www.ebi.ac.uk/emdb/EMD-0809 ↗
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  53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.precamres.2018.11.019 ↗
  54. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0092 ↗
  55. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9564328/ ↗
  56. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06170-w ↗
  57. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0059-5 ↗
  58. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-1239-x ↗
  59. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01638-2 ↗
  60. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adh0066 ↗
  61. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36858653/ ↗
  62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.015 ↗
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  71. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533 ↗
  72. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10523466/ ↗
  73. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09486 ↗
  74. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1514974112 ↗
  75. https://elifesciences.org/articles/20437 ↗
  76. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9575660/ ↗
  77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbabio.2025.149564 ↗
  78. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12990190/ ↗
  79. https://www.molevol.hhu.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Fakultaeten/Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche_Fakultaet/Biologie/Institute/Molekulare_Evolution/Dokumente/Martin_BBA_2026.pdf ↗
  80. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-micro-090817-062213 ↗
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  84. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk1075 ↗
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  87. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6854002/ ↗
  88. Commons CC0 standalone diagram ↗
  89. CIL:50506 ↗
  90. Cell Image Library CIL:40505 ↗
  91. NIGMS Image and Video Gallery ↗
  92. “Red blood cells (2)” ↗
  93. live actin–mitochondrion clip ↗
  94. network image ↗
  95. mtDNA nucleoid images ↗
  96. “The Origins of Complex Life | Searching for the Asgards” ↗
  97. 2022 launch thread ↗
  98. live appendage video ↗
  99. Nerearchaeum cryo-ET thread ↗
  100. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mitochondrion_(standalone_version)-en.svg ↗
  101. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_blood_cells_(2).jpg ↗
  102. DOI: 10.1016/j.precamres.2017.04.042 ↗

Music

  • Meditation From The Star Orion
    OctahedronMusic · Envato Elements

How this film was made

Created and editorially directed by Anders Lunde using a custom production system developed over six months. AI assists research, drafting, programming, and visual production; I review and edit the material and make the final editorial decisions. Narration uses text-to-speech. Visuals combine custom-built scientific animations, AI-generated reconstructions, and credited scientific imagery.

Generated reconstructions illustrate scientific interpretations. They are distinct from photographs, specimens, and measured data.

More about the creator and production →