“…Multiple reports have suggested that despite enhanced glycolysis, cancer cells can produce a significant fraction of their ATP via mitochondrial respiration (Caino et al, 2015; LeBleu et al, 2014; Lu et al, 2015; Maiuri and Kroemer, 2015; Tan et al, 2015; Viale et al, 2015; Ward and Thompson, 2012; Xu et al, 2015). In a growing tumor, adaptive metabolic reprogramming, precipitated in part by oncogenic transformation, gives cancer cells the advantage of active proliferation, functional motility, and metastasis (Basak and Banerjee, 2015; Caino et al, 2015; LeBleu et al, 2014). A recent study by Tan et al has described that when mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)-depleted tumor cells (ρ 0 cells) were injected into mice, they enhanced their tumor growth property by acquisition of mtDNA from the host mouse cells and reassembling a mitochondrial electron transport chain complex (ETC) and respiratory function (Tan et al, 2015).…”