Objective: UPlanSApo 100x oil/1.40	Exposure: 300 ms
Microscope: Olympus DSU/IX81	Gain: 3
Camera: Hamamatsu ImagEM	Interval: 2 s

Mitochondria are rod-shaped organelles that can be considered the power generators of the cell, converting oxygen and nutrients into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is the chemical energy "currency" of the cell that powers the cell's metabolic activities. This process is called aerobic respiration and is the reason animals breathe oxygen. Without mitochondria (singular, mitochondrion), higher animals would likely not exist because their cells would only be able to obtain energy from anaerobic respiration (in the absence of oxygen), a process much less efficient than aerobic respiration. In fact, mitochondria enable cells to produce 15 times more ATP than they could otherwise, and complex animals, like humans, need large amounts of energy in order to survive. In this digital video, normal pig kidney epithelial cells (LLC-PK1 line) were transiently transfected with a chimera of TurboRFP (an orange fluorescent dimer) and a mitochondrial targeting signal to visualize the dynamics of these organelles.