Mitochondrial morphology and protein import--a tight connection?

Although the field of mitochondrial protein import and assembly may have initially been viewed as a completely distinct area of investigation to that of mitochondrial morphology and dynamics, recent findings have noted a clear influence on organelle morphology by perturbations in protein import pathways. This review aims to provide an overview of the mitochondrial import machinery in context of the recent link between translocation components and organelle structure, in addition to conferring the questions and challenges that have surfaced due to these observations.