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A tiny structure inside the cell resembling a bacterium and responsible for burning food molecules with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide, and thus providing energy for the cell’s use. Each cell has hundreds or thousands of mitochondria. If there’s a single aspect of a cell that reveals the process of aging, it’s the mitochondria, which get less efficient as a person (and specifically a tissue) gets older. Mitochondrial aging in egg cells could be the reason why eggs in women over the age of 40 so often seem unable to produce healthy embryos - an intriguing area of current research (see mtDNA and read the box, How Eggs Get Their "Use-by" Date: Mishaps in the Mitochondria on page 76 of Overcoming Infertility
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