The Lowly Mitochondrion

I can no longer get it up, nor get it on or in. ‘Course, age will do that to all of us. Same for my wife. She can no longer let it in.

So much for Cialis and Viagra. Beyond a certain point, they do nothing for you, can do nothing for you. So too for erotica. It can titillate, but in no way can it make up for the loss of youth. (Sorry, Christine, you are no substitute!)

It’s all the fault of our biology. If “we” had continued as single-celled bacteria, or prokaryotes — cells without a nucleus, we would have been guaranteed immortal life. One cell splits into two and so on ad infinitum. Then came the discovery, or the biological invention of the cellular complex known as a eukaryote, cells with a nucleus. Eukaryotes enabled the creation of multi-celled organisms. With the invention of sex, life blossomed.

The inevitable companion of sex, however, was the invention of death and decay. You cannot have one without the other. Love and marriage go hand in hand, but so do sex and death. Which is why it is futile to attempt to extend human life spans beyond their natural limits. Our fundamental biochemical mechanisms cannot allow it.

Doesn’t make it any easier to adjust to not being able to do it. Our sole biological purpose is to reproduce. If people think otherwise, they are not thinking from an evolutionary perspective. Sex ensures reproduction of a more adaptable version of oneself. The need to meet this biological imperative, is what drives all of us in a frenzy of activity aimed at ensuring survival of the species but not of the individual.

It all began with one prokaryote invading another. Or maybe being devoured by the one it invaded. We don’t know. It was many, many moons ago.

It resulted in a chimera. Today all multicellular organisms are chimeric descendants of that one union. Whether it was an invasion or a meal, the two single-celled bacteria decided to join forces, to become cooperative, to adopt symbiosis as the survival mechanism of and for each other. They would live together, separate but in a very strange union.

Today we know the invader as a mitochondrion. All eukaryotes are a combination of two bacteria. All of what we know on earth as multicellular organisms arose from that single invasive event. Why one, we don’t…

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