Donald G. Lindmark Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Researcher in anaerobic metabolism. With Miklós Müller, Lindmark described the hydrogenosome and its involvement in pyruvate metabolism, helping explain energy conversion in organisms with unusual cellular organization.[ref]
Miklós Müller Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Researcher in anaerobic cell biology. With Donald G. Lindmark, Müller characterized the hydrogenosome and its role in pyruvate metabolism, connecting an unusual organelle with energy production without oxygen.[ref]
The hydrogenosomes and mitosomes are specialized mitochondrion-related organelles found in various anaerobic or oxygen-limited eukaryotes. Typical hydrogenosomes support anaerobic ATP production, converting substrates such as pyruvate into products including acetate, carbon dioxide and molecular hydrogen. Substrate-level phosphorylation supplies ATP, while hydrogenase disposes of reducing equivalents as hydrogen; oxygen is not the terminal acceptor of a conventional respiratory chain in this pathway.[ref]
The mitosomes retain selected essential metabolic functions but do not generate ATP by oxidative phosphorylation. In Giardia, their role includes iron-sulfur cluster assembly and protein maturation, demonstrated using organelle markers and biochemical reconstitution.[ref] Their functions are lineage-dependent: Entamoeba histolytica mitosomes compartmentalize a sulfate activation pathway.[ref] Thus neither organelle class should be described simply as a nonfunctional mitochondrion.