The return of the mitochondrion

For a fresh-faced (well, apart from the beard) PhD graduate in 1989, mitochondrial bioenergetics might have seemed a strange choice of research path. Flushed with the general acceptance of the chemiosmotic theory, many felt that the area had passed its heyday. With the publication of its ‘bible’ (Bioenergetics, the definitive textbook by David Nicholls)1 the field, if not history, had come to a .