Mitochondria play a key role in energy metabolism in many tissues, including skeletal
muscle and liver. Inherent disorders of mitochondria such as DNA deletions cause major
disruption of metabolism and can result in severe impairment or death. However, the
occurrence of such disorders is extremely rare and cannot account for the majority of
metabolic disease. Recently, mitochondrial dysfunction of a more subtle nature in skeletal
muscle has been implicated in the pathology of chronic metabolic disease characterized by …