Mitochondria: Much ado about nothing? How dangerous is reactive oxygen species production?

For more than 50 years, reactive oxygen species have been considered as harmful agents, which can attack proteins, lipids or nucleic acids. In order to deal with reactive oxygen species, there is a sophisticated system developed in mitochondria to prevent possible damage. Indeed, increased reactive oxygen species levels contribute to pathomechanisms in several human diseases, either by its impaired defense system or increased production of reactive oxygen species. However, in the last two decades, the importance of reactive oxygen species in many cellular signaling pathways has been unraveled. Homeostatic levels were shown to be necessary for correct differentiation during embryonic expansion of stem cells. Although the mechanism is still not fully understood, we cannot only regard reactive oxygen species as a toxic by-product of mitochondrial respiration anymore. This article is part of a Directed Issue entitled: Energy Metabolism Disorders and Therapies. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).