Mitochondrial involvement in the development and progression of diseases

Mitochondria arose evolutionally through a fateful endosymbiosis more than 1.45 billion years ago. While the functions of mitochondria are fairly well characterized under normal physiological conditions, there are important aspects of mitochondrial involvement in several pathological settings that still remain poorly understood/investigated. In this context, this Special Issue was designed to better clarify the mitochondrial role in the progression and development of specific pa- thologies, including neurological and rare/orphan diseases. Mitochon- drial involvement in these disorders has been attributed to the ability of these organelles to trigger deadly machineries such as apoptosis, ne- crosis, and autophagy that will then affect tissues and organs [1,2]. More recently, it has been shown that ferroptosis and inflammasome activa- tion are also associated with atypical mitochondrial function [3–5]. Therefore, the aim of this special issue was to bring together the state of the art on the still unexplained and unexplored role of mitochondria in orphan and neurological disorders. A total of 19 manuscripts were accepted for publication and most of them related to the link between mitochondria and neurological conditions.