It was ruined for me when I was getting my masters in genetics and learned that "mitochondria" is plural, and the singular is "mitochondrion." So, it's either "the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell" or "the mitochondrion is the powerhouse of the cell," and neither feel right.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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I feel like the leading "the" is what's messing that up.
"Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell" sounds fine to me.
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I refer to one piece of broccoli as a ~~broccolus~~ broccolo.
Except its Italian, not Latin, so the singular is broccolo . If you want to use the Latin word,.it's broccus
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I have one die which gives one datum at a time.
Why have you done this to us?!
A grammatical error in a translation from a foreign galactic basic to English is what ruined the force for you? Lol. If we can believe in defying gravity, I think we can believe "The iceburgs is the ship's fear."
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It's mental how this is pretty much known worldwide, like drawing that S thing. The one similar to the Suzuki logo
As a non-native English speaker, I still have no idea why this specific phrase is so significant and at this point I'm afraid to ask.
I was born in the 1970's and it is lost on me too, I think its something that became a thing to the generation after me
I took biology in 1996; it wasn't a thing yet. Someone else claimed it was already widespread by 2001. I don't think I encountered it in the wild before 2005, but it could have been much later than that.
KnowYourMeme suggests the phrase originated in a textbook from 1957, but it didn't reach memehood until 2014.
I think it comes from an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and exploded as a meme.
It’s not from any specific media reference, it’s just essentially what every child was taught, verbatim, in grade school.
Apparently as an Internet thing it only really took off in 2013 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mitochondria-is-the-powerhouse-of-the-cell
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the meme originated from tumblr. the quote itself is older than color tv.
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Lol that's like saying a joke originated on the Family Guy
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I think it's just the most simplified you can get talking about cellular biology, specifically when teaching organelles. So most primary science textbooks use that terminology and it's more memorable than all the other organelles so it just stuck and it got repeated and reviewed every year and it sorta became a pre Internet meme and part of a shared consciousness if you were schooled in the US.
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The S was known worldwide pre internet though. Was the powerhouse line?
They are both universal knowledge passed down through generations
...maternally via mitochondrial DNA
we are the self-preservation society.
The exact origin of the symbol (cool S) is unclear; however, it is generally considered to be an artifact of childlore, meaning that it is taught by children to children over the course of generations.
TIL
Cool S wiki
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Can we take a step back and just appreciate how good Bluey is?
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Challenging but accessible
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Inclusive
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Emotional depth
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Grounded
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Not disgusting annoying
I really appreciate when kids shows are made with parents/guardians in mind (ie will watching the same episode 50 times make you want to off yourself or not)
It's really amazing. The only (not really) downside is that certain episodes make me tear up.
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What's interesting to me about that phrase is that no one uses the word "powerhouse" for anything else any more, except maybe to call something powerful.
Since it's not the 1920s any more and we have an electrical grid and centralized power generation. We still sometimes do use temporary off-grid generators, but we no longer have any need for a dedicated word that means "building or shed that we keep our generators in".
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Lmao I was watching an episode of ST: Voyager the other day and a little girl learning about mitochondria said they were the "warp core of the cell". That phrase is ridiculously pervasive
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What's with americans and mitochondria ?
It's been so ubiquitous for so long that I honestly don't know where it came from. But most of the time when I hear "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" it's being used to take a jab at how impractical our education system is, as though to say, "instead of teaching me about X, they taught me about the mitochondria"
Mitochondria are cool and important.
But I'd like to have learned actual practical information as well. Not once has mitochondria come up other than as a meme, but knowing how local and national government works might have been more useful. If it wasn't on the state standardized test, it wasn't taught at my schools.
Compound interest.
Finances are taught poorly everywhere tbf. I was lucky with my precalculus teacher being a huge finance nerd, she spent at least 3 separate full class sessions going over credit cards and loans completely unrelated to our content at the time
Understanding the building blocks of life is very important. This is the foundation of how your body processes energy. If you want to lose weight, for example, you should understand respiration.
Reread my comment, I ALSO wanted to learn info more useful to every day life. I never said instead of.
Grew up in Asia. Only moved to the US for undergrad... And this applies. So it's not just the Americans methinks.
That's interesting
We don't have that where I live, sure we had to learn the organelles of a cell, but there was no über-focusing on the mitochondria.
(Btw I didn't know about "methinks". Learned a new word, thanks !)
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Our politicians of a Sithian persuasion want to use Force Lightning on their enemies and subjects. Sadly(?), mitochondria are not quite the same as midi-chlorians.
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P O W E R H O U S E
She's mighty-mighty, just lettin' it all hang out
Inertia is a property of matter
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins
Mitosis is….
Damn, I haven't thought about that 90's Sabrina show since, well.. the 90's!
Why does everyone know this, but still think the definition of "metabolism" is solely built towards fake weight loss regiments? Bit of a tangent.
Its so ubiquitous that LLMs will always say it like that when it comes up.
Same here in Germany - immediately came to my mind!
the mitochondria is the energy center of the cell
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