aurora kinase phosphorylates evolutionarily conserved sites on its target to regulate mitochondrial division.

The mitochondrion is an organelle that was derived from an endosymbiosis. Although regulation of mitochondrial growth by the host cell is necessary for the maintenance of mitochondria, it is unclear how this regulatory mechanism was acquired. To address this, we studied the primitive unicellular red alga , which has the simplest eukaryotic genome and a single mitochondrion.