Reading papers I just had this random question. Would be really interesting to hear your thoughts!
Let's say you transplanted a few
1) chimp mitochondria or
2) Vero mitochondria
into human cells in a living human.
Would they be immunologically rejected?
They do have a few amino acids mutated in every protein - compared to the human mitochondrial proteins.
I would think they could probably still fuse with the normal human mitochondria and share DNA, and undergo homologus recombination.
So they might stick around, and replicate / get co-replicated.
What would you see as the outcome? The human immune system tolerating them? Immune system rejecting them? Human getting cancer (Vero is an immortal cell line, mitochonria might have accumulated pre-cancerous de-regulatory mutations)?