Science & technology| Repairing body cells
Mitochondria transplants could cure diseases and lengthen lives
A technique that may create a new field of medicine
An illustration of a person in a sand timer holding up a mitochondrion blocking the sand from falling through the gap.
Photograph: Keith Negley
Organ transplants are a familiar idea. Organelle transplants, less so. Yet organelles are to cells what organs are to bodies—specialised components that divvy up the labour needed to keep the whole thing ticking over. Swapping old organelles for new in cells where the machinery has switched from ticking to tocking thus makes sense in principle. And, for one type of organelle, that principle is now being tested in practice.