One Big, Dysfunctional Family: A Mitochondrial Memoir of Humanity

Meet Your Matrilineal Landlady

It is a truth, if not universally acknowledged then certainly worth repeating, that humans are very good at finding things to disagree about. Politics, religion, football teams, whether a hot dog is a sandwich – you name it, we’ve drawn a line in the sand, built a fortress, and declared war over it. We sort ourselves into tribes and groups, each proudly waving flags and opinions like battle standards. Yet, beneath all the glorious, infuriating noise of our differences, lies a strange and beautiful sameness.

It’s not a sameness you can see on the surface. We look different, sound different, and often live worlds apart. But under the skin, inside every one of our billions of cells, we’re all walking around with the same tiny passenger – a microscopic roommate who’s been with us longer than history, longer than language, longer than love. And the best part? She never pays rent.

Her name is mitochondrion. Or rather, mitochondria, because there are thousands of them in every cell, like a swarm of very helpful, bean-shaped freeloaders. If you remember anything from high school biology, it’s probably the phrase “mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell.” That’s true, but it’s a tragic understatement. Calling them powerhouses is like calling Shakespeare “a guy who was good with words” – it leaves out all the drama, the legacy, and the shocking plot twists.

Because these little beans do more than make energy. They carry a message. A reminder. A tiny, circular strand of DNA that has been passed, unbroken, from mother to child across generations – across millennia. It is this DNA, tucked inside our mitochondria, that quietly tells us we all belong to the same sprawling, chaotic, and deeply dysfunctional family. And if that sounds like an exaggeration, buckle up. This is a story about how the invisible threads of biology tie us together, and about how that tiny organelle your teacher once mentioned might be the most powerful symbol of human connection you’ve never heard of.

What Dental Plaque Can Teach Us About Teamwork

Before we climb the evolutionary ladder to the dizzying heights of human civilization, let’s take a quick, slightly disgusting detour into your mouth. More specifically, your teeth.

That fuzzy sweater your molars seem to be knitting when you haven’t brushed in a while? That’s not just “gross.” That’s a biofilm – one of the most successful and ancient forms of life on Earth. Dental plaque is a living, breathing city of bacteria. And they’re not just sitting there randomly like bored commuters on a train. They’re collaborating. They build slimy, protective apartment blocks, share food through complex nutrient pipelines, and even communicate using chemical signals – kind of like sending microscopic text messages. (“URGENT: Sugar incoming, sector 4. ALL HANDS ON DECK.”)

Biofilms are the original gangsters of the microbial world. Once they form, they are incredibly hard to get rid of. The bacteria inside a biofilm are like a mob with shields up: they protect each other, adapt quickly, and survive attacks that would easily wipe them out if they were alone. Scientists believe this is a trial run for multicellular life. These microbes act like a neighbourhood: cooperating, protecting each other, and even sacrificing themselves for the good of the community.

In a weird way, we’re just a fancier, more upright biofilm. Your body is trillions of cells working together – heart cells pumping, brain cells thinking, immune cells defending. Every cell has its own job, but none of them could survive alone for long.

And yet, we humans spend an astonishing amount of time and energy focused on dividing ourselves. The bacteria in your mouth, busy building their plaque paradise, understand something we often forget: if the community doesn’t survive, nobody does. They’re busy with teamwork while we’re busy arguing online with a stranger about the ending of a TV show.

The Mitochondrial Family Tree

Let’s return to our main character: the mitochondrion.

There’s something unique about the way mitochondria are passed on. Most of our genetic material – what makes us, us – is a shuffled deck of cards inherited from both parents. But mitochondria break that rule. Their DNA comes only from your mother.

When a sperm fertilizes an egg, it’s a minimalist delivery. It brings the nuclear DNA and that’s it – its mitochondria are left at the door like a forgotten coat. That means all your mitochondria came from your mother, and hers from her mother, and so on, all the way back through time. It’s an uninterrupted line, a biological torch passed from hand to hand through hundreds of thousands of years of famine, migration, and questionable fashion choices.

This unbroken maternal line leads us to a woman known to science as “Mitochondrial Eve.” No, she wasn’t the Biblical Eve, and she certainly wasn’t the only woman alive in her time. But she is the one – through sheer, dumb luck and the resilience of her descendants – whose mitochondrial DNA survived in every single human alive today. She lived in Africa roughly 200,000 years ago, and every person on Earth carries a piece of her inside them.

That’s not poetry. That’s genetics.

Think about that the next time you’re stuck in traffic. The person who just cut you off? A cousin. The politician you can’t stand? A cousin. The person who invented autocorrect? A very misguided cousin. All that conflict and division? It’s a family squabble on a global scale. Every war, every revolution, every bitter disagreement on how to load the dishwasher – every one of them has happened between distant relatives. We’re all branches of the same ancient tree, whether we like it or not.

The Survival of the Smallest

You might be wondering – if mitochondria are so important, why haven’t they changed much in 200,000 years? The answer is: they have, but in very clever ways.

Mitochondria are masters of survival. When damaged, they can fuse with others, split apart to minimize harm, or even get recycled by the cell in a process of ruthless but necessary housekeeping. They aren’t just passive passengers; they actively manage their own legacy.

From the mitochondrion’s point of view, we are the vehicle. Your birth wasn’t just about you. It was about making sure it had a new, safe ride for the next leg of its journey through time. That’s humbling. We think of ourselves as the main characters, but zoom in far enough, and we’re the tricked-out van for a rockstar organelle that’s been on tour for eons.

This makes our obsession with division – between races, countries, ideologies – seem profoundly absurd. Biologically, we go to extraordinary lengths to preserve the unity of our cells. Socially, we go to even greater lengths to tear ourselves apart. It’s a cosmic joke, and the punchline is written in our DNA.

So, What Now? (The Awkward Family Reunion)

Once you start seeing mitochondria as messengers of shared ancestry, it’s hard to unsee it. We are not strangers. We are not enemies. We are cousins, descended from the same woman, carrying her legacy in every heartbeat, every breath, every thought.

What if we started thinking about politics and diplomacy as a kind of family reunion? Not the polished kind with catered food, but the messy, chaotic kind where Uncle Steve is explaining his latest conspiracy theory, a cousin is trying to get everyone to invest in crypto, and two sides of the family haven’t spoken since the Great Potato Salad Incident of ’98. What if international negotiations were just awkward dinners with relatives, you’re not sure you like – but you know you’re stuck with them forever?

Maybe we’d be a little more patient. A little more generous. A little more willing to admit that, yes, maybe their way of making stuffing isn’t wrong, just different. After all, it’s harder to dehumanize someone when you realize you share a great-great-great… (insert about ten thousand more ‘greats’) …grandmother.

An Inheritance of Light

In a time when the world feels increasingly fractured, it’s easy to feel alone. The walls between us seem to grow higher every day, built from fear, misunderstanding, and the relentless drumbeat of “us” versus “them.”

But in those moments of isolation, I want you to remember the quiet, unbroken chain inside you. Remember that Eve’s legacy is not just a scientific curiosity; it is a story of impossible survival. Imagine that long, unbroken line of mothers. See their hands, passing that mitochondrial torch through ice ages and droughts, through migrations across continents, through wars and famines and plagues. They faced fears we can barely imagine, and yet, every single one of them succeeded. They loved, they endured, they gave life, and they passed that light on.

That light is now inside of you.

It burns in the cells of the person you love and the stranger you pass on the street. It powers the mind of the artist who moves you and the scientist who challenges you. It is the quiet hum of belonging beneath the clamour of our disagreements. It doesn’t erase our differences – our cultures, our stories, our identities are real and beautiful. But it reminds us that these are chapters in the same epic book.

So, the next time the world makes you feel small, or the divisions seem too great to overcome, put a hand on your chest. Feel your heartbeat. That rhythm is powered by her. The warmth you feel in your own skin is her legacy. You are not a stranger here. You are family

And you are carrying the fire.

Article based upon the author’s book—”We Are Not Us: The Invisible Ecosystem Within”:
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0DNCFKTH3/

Abhijit Deonath is a KanYini volunteer and author of this creative article. He is a creative mind, a film-maker, trained in scientific methods, lives in Canberra (addeonath@hotmail.com)

Abhijit Deonath

Abhijit Deonath is a KanYini volunteer and author of Kanyini Earth Journal. He is a creative mind, a film-maker, trained in scientific methods, who lives in Canberra.