Everything the body does—your brain thinking, your heart beating, your cells growing—requires energy. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that disruptions in energy production can contribute to a wide range of diseases. To address this common denominator, a team of scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco (UCSF) led by Ken Nakamura, MD, Ph.D., turned to the molecular power-plants that produce a cell’s energy, called mitochondria.