Teaching cells to take out more of their own trash: a new trick revives failing powerhouses

Inside every cell, tiny powerhouses called mitochondria wear out, and damaged proteins pile up faster than the cell can clear them — a failure at the heart of mitochondrial disorders, a group of serious inherited diseases. At UC Berkeley, Professor Michael Rapé's team found a way to switch the cell's own clean-up crews into a higher gear. Their approach, called stimulated protein degradation, wakes up quality-control enzymes that tag many harmful proteins at once for removal. In laboratory models of mitochondrial disease, the trick improved how the powerhouses worked and helped nerve cells survive. It is a proof of concept in cells, not a medicine, and the team is careful about that — but it opens a genuinely new direction: instead of blocking one bad protein, restore the system that clears them all.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation