Incoming links: Free radical
Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) part 5 "Murder or suicide" mentions that the key events that leads to apoptosis is when certain proteints normally present in the inner mitochondrial membrane spill out, and that this often happens when free radicals are produced in excess: the cell is really not doing well in those cases. This point suggests that the initial mitochondrial endosymbiosis happened due to a parasite that lived inside another cell. It mentions that even today we see parasites kill the host cell when they feel that the cell does not have many nutrients. This frees the parasites to then infect other cells.
Mitochondria have DNA because they need to be controlled individually Updated 2024-12-15 +Created 1970-01-01
Argued at Power, Sex, Suicide by Nick Lane (2006) page 212.
Basically, energy supply has to be modulated rather quickly, because we spend a lot sometimes, and very little other times.
Even not turning it off quickly enough is a problem, as it starts to generate free radicals which fuck you up.
If control came from the nucleus, it has no way to address different mitochondria. But it might be that only one of the mitochondria needs the change. If the nucleus tells all mitochondria to stop producing when only one is full, the others are going to say: "nope, I'm not full, continue producing!" and the one that need to stop will have its signal overriden by the others.