2023 Vol. 9, No. 3
Cover Story
According to “Journey to the West”, the Monkey King, known as Sun Wu-kong in Chinese, was born from a magic stone. This stone monkey was nourished by the essence of heaven and earth. The mitochondrial nucleoid is not just a spherical sub-organelle structure for storing genetic material; it’s also responsible for mtDNA replication and transcription. The authors demonstrate that TFAM undergoes phase separation with mtDNA, which drives the nucleoid self-assembly and reveals a new pattern of multi-phase separation in regulating mitochondrial transcription, which orchestrates the multi-function of TFAM in the mitochondrial nucleoid organization and transcription. On the cover, the multi-layered structure of the monkey, in-cubated from stone, just likes the multi-layered structure of mitochondrial nucleoid, and the mountain looks like the cristae of mitochondria.