Study Maps Mitochondria Across Eight Species
A Broad Institute and Harvard consortium compared mitochondrial proteins across eight organisms, releasing its dataset and machine-learning tool publicly.
Updated on Nov. 14, 2026 in Life Sciences
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A consortium of seven laboratories and 25 researchers released the MitoCarta Tree of Life, comparing mitochondrial proteins across eight organisms in a study published in Cell. The team generated complete mitoproteomes for six organisms never previously profiled this way.
Why it matters
Mitochondria evolved from a single merger roughly two billion years ago, and the results show how widely their protein makeup varies across life. The consortium says several Acanthamoeba castellanii proteins are plausible drug targets against the parasite.
The dataset comes from complete mitoproteome profiles of six organisms compared against existing human and yeast catalogs, with 198 additional species represented only by machine-learning predictions. Whether the predicted inventories match laboratory measurements has not been established.
The players
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
A biomedical research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, jointly affiliated with MIT and Harvard, that led the MitoCarta Tree of Life consortium.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
A major U.S. biomedical research organization that supported the consortium through its Emerging Pathogens Initiative.
Harvard Medical School
The medical school of Harvard University, with which the lead author and several researchers are affiliated.
The details
The MitoCarta Tree of Life project was formed in 2022 with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Emerging Pathogens Initiative. The consortium made the full mitoproteome dataset and machine-learning tool freely available at mitocarta.org.
Timeline
2022: Consortium formed with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Emerging Pathogens Initiative.
Roughly two billion years ago: Merger creating the last eukaryotic common ancestor's mitochondrion occurred.
November 14, 2026: Study describing the findings was published in Cell.
The Big Picture
The project extends the Broad Institute's original MitoCarta catalog, built from human and mouse mitochondria, to a wide range of eukaryotes. Comparing distant species tests whether mitochondrial protein sets that look fixed in mammals hold up across the tree of life.
Proteins identified in parasites such as Acanthamoeba castellanii could eventually inform drug development, though the consortium presents them only as plausible targets. The open dataset lets other labs test those candidates directly.
The takeaway
Mitochondria are far from uniform across life, and the sheer range of their protein sets reveals how much remains to be mapped. Researchers can use the open dataset to examine these differences in their own work.
Further reading
Explore more Life Sciences coverage for context on how cell biology research like this is advancing.
More information
Access the full MitoCarta Tree of Life open dataset and tool to explore the mitoproteome data.
Source note: This article includes information reported by The Scientist.
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