The field of “mitochondriology” has undergone a renaissance in the last decade.
Compared to state of the field as recently as 1985, entirely new areas of investigation
have emerged, such as the role of mitochondrial function in apoptosis and mitochondrial
dysfunction in human disease. Furthermore, our understanding of basic phenomena—
mitochondrial import, movement, fusion, fission, inheritance, and interactions with the
nucleus and with other organelles—is passing rapidly from the realm of speculation to
that of fact.