What Jared Rutter has said about Mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC1/MPC2)

Rutter says the existence of a mitochondrial pyruvate carrier had been known for 60 or 70 years before the protein was identified.

“It's been known for 60 or 70 years that mitochondria must have a carrier to enable pyruvate to get in, but it was not identified what that protein was”

Huberman Lab: How Mitochondria Control Your Metabolism | Dr. Jared Rutter (Sep 7, 2026) · Listen from 53:25

Rutter says his lab's motivation to study mitochondria was the realization that the functions of many mitochondrial proteins were unknown.

“the realization that many of the proteins that make up mitochondria, that do the stuff that mitochondria do, we don't know what their functions are”

Huberman Lab: How Mitochondria Control Your Metabolism | Dr. Jared Rutter (Sep 7, 2026) · Listen from 54:09

Rutter says the MPC discovery required triangulating yeast, fly, and human cell data and could not have been made in any single model organism.

“we could not have made that discovery with any one type of organism. If we just had the yeast data, we wouldn't have figured it out”

Huberman Lab: How Mitochondria Control Your Metabolism | Dr. Jared Rutter (Sep 7, 2026) · Listen from 1:23:51