Are mitochondria the Achilles' heel of the Kingdom Fungi?

Abstract

A founding event in the origin of eukaryotes is the acquisition of an extraordinary organelle, the mitochondrion, which contains its own genome. Being linked to energy metabolism, oxidative stress, cell signalling, and cell death, the mitochondrion to a certain extent controls life and death in eukaryotic cells. The large metabolic diversity and living strategies of the Kingdom Fungi make their mitochondria of particular evolutionary interest. The review focuses first on the characteristics of mitochondria in the Kingdom Fungi, then on their implications in the organism survival, pathogenicity and resistance, and finally on proposing unconventional strategies to investigate the biology of fungal mitochondria, unveiling the possibility that mitochondria play as the Achilles' heel of this kingdom.