In perhaps the crowning achievement of a decade of work, a group of Harvard University researchers have identified the specific protein responsible for calcium absorption in mitochondria, solving a long-standing and crucial problem for our understanding of an essential cellular component.
Drawing on resources such as "the Human Genome Project, freely downloadable genomic databases, and a few tricks," as Vamsi Mootha, the project leader and associate professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School, put it, the project represents a significant step forward for the field and should open the door to treatment of a number of diseases thought to be related to calcium deficiency in mitochondria. Particularly remarkable about the study is its synthesis of recently-developed cellular and genomic technologies to solve the problem.