GYÖRGY HAJNÓCZKY
Professor and Director, MitoCare Center
Department of Pathology, Anatomy and Cell Biology Thomas Jefferson University
Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaEDYTA ZIELINSKA, THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITYIn the 1970s, mitochondria were the darlings of biological research. Everyone and their cousin was plucking the tiny kidney-shaped organelles out of cells and picking them apart, hoping to unlock the secrets of cellular energy production. Then, in 1978, biochemist Peter Mitchell won the Nobel Prize for sorting out how mitochondria produce ATP. Just like that, the frenzy was over. “It was like mitochondria didn’t have anything else to offer,” recalls György Hajnóczky, a biologist at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “Few cared about them anymore.”
In the mid-1980s, Hajnóczky was a medical student at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary. He remembers colleagues, working in the lab of a well-respected mitochondria researcher, desperately seeking jobs in other areas of biology. But Hajnóczky still had questions about mitochondria, and after graduation and a move to the United States, he spearheaded an effort to visualize and track mitochondria inside living cells, rather than in isolation, as was the convention. Thanks to his work and that of others, the field experienced a resurgence that has yet to wane.
In his 23-year career, Hajnóczky, with the help of colleagues, has invented numerous microscopy techniques and fluorescent probes. Using these tools, he has described novel mechanisms by which mitochondria interact with each other and other organelles ...
