Hi, Benjamin here. Welcome to the Nature Briefing podcast. The Friday show where we talk about a couple of stories we've read about in The Nature Briefing, which is, of course, Nature's daily email roundup of the latest science. Stories. And joining me today to chat is none other than Charmoney Bundell. Sharmony, thank you for being here. I am actually really excited about today's story. Why don't we start with you then in that case? Tell me what you've got. Look, I'll give you the preview. It's got mitochondria. We all love mitochondria. Ding, ding. Ding. It's got evolution. I love evolution. Ding, ding, ding, ding. This is a preprint from bio-archive, so not a peer-reviewed paper,

but I read an article in Nature where they've covered it. And yes, it's about mitochondria,

the powerhouse of the cell, little organelles found in eukaryotic cells, producing energy.

And it's kind of about how our cells got to be how they are.

Right. But it came from an experiment with a parasite.

Okay. Parasite biology, often very strange. Tell me what's going on here.

So a group of researchers infected human cancer cells with a parasite called toxoplasma gondi. This is the parasite that causes

toxoplasmosis, which if you've ever gotten pregnant, they tell you to stay away from cat poos,

you don't get toxoplasmosis. Right. But it's actually a really common parasite. And it's also,

here's a little side tour, it's the one that changes the behaviour of rodents to make them more likely to get eaten by cats.

They stop being scared.

Yeah.

That's a whole other story.

But go look it up.

It's great.

Mind controlling parasite.

So anyway, these researchers are there infecting these human cancer cells with some toxoplasma.

And what happened was that these little parasites in the cell started having

an effect on the mitochondria in the cell, these membrane-bound organelles. And these mitochondria started

to shed their outer membranes. And that membrane then formed its own little bubbly structure.

They call them spots. Structure's positive for out of mitochondrial membrane

spots. Oh. And those little spots went and engulfed some other little organelles, little things in the cells

...