The mitochondrion is an essential organelle due its role in the generation of ATP for cellular function. The maintenance of homeostatic mitochondrial function is a critical point to assure the physiological role of such an important organelle. Indeed, recent studies have demonstrated that the dysregulation of mitochondrial function leads to several human degenerative diseases mainly affecting the nervous system and the heart [Emmanuel Quansah, Mol Neurodegener. 2018; 13: 28. Published online 2018 May Mayb 24. doi: 10.1186/s13024-018-0260-x. ].

This is exemplified by the number of deleterious neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD (Alzheimer Disease) and PD (Parkinson Disease), where perturbation of mitochondrial function is an essential component of their pathogenesis. Our understanding of mitochondrial homeostasis and metabolism is an essential point to identify potential therapeutic target to treat these diseases.

The study of mitochondria needs an approach based on several experimental methodologies allowing the detection of mitochondrial metabolism, mitochondrial dynamics, mitochondrial genomic, proteomic and metabolomic and mitochondrial DNA mutations.

The project proposal intends to begin students to bioenergetic methods for mitochondrial energy metabolism detection through modern tools which allow to study respiratory chain activity, respiratory complexes and supercomplexes activities. Such an approach will be followed by studying the mitochondrial dynamic in terms of fusion and fission as well as comparative analyses of mitochondrial proteomes, cellular transcriptomes and targeted metabolomics. Mitochondrial DNA mutations are another important aspect as it is well known their impact on mitochondrial activity. Mitochondrial DNA oxidative damage and repair will be investigated.

The student will be jointly supervised by Prof. Maria Moreno, Prof. Elena Silvestri and Dr. Federica Cioffi who have been working on mitochondrial analysis for years, and by PhD students and postdoc who are performing such research. The project may include bioinformatic approaches to unravel mitochondrial networks supervised by Prof. Michele Ceccarelli and Prof. Luigi Cerulo.