Newcastle researcher joins £66m mitochondrial disease programme
September 17 2026
Dr Jim Stewart has secured funding as part of a national programme that aims to tackle one of biology's most persistent challenges: how to edit animal mitochondrial DNA
Dr Jim Stewart, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Medical Sciences and member of Newcastle University's Mitochondrial Research Group, has secured funding as part of a £66 million national programme that aims to tackle one of biology's most persistent challenges: how to edit animal mitochondrial DNA.
Dr Stewart's team, with collaborators Carlos Moraes (University of Miami, USA) and Peter Rehling (University of of Göttingen, Germany) is among 19 teams supported through the Advanced Research and Invention Agency's (ARIA) Precision Mitochondria programme.
This research could help lay the foundations for new therapeutic approaches for patients affected by mitochondrial DNA disorders.
The programme brings together researchers from across disciplines to develop new technologies that could eventually allow scientists to accurately engineer mitochondrial DNA, opening new opportunities to understand and potentially treat mitochondrial diseases.
Addressing a long-standing scientific challenge
Mitochondria are often described as the "powerhouses" of our cells because they generate the energy needed for the body to function. Unlike other parts of the cell, mitochondria have their own DNA, inherited exclusively from our mothers.
While scientists can now edit most forms of DNA using technologies such as CRISPR, mitochondrial DNA has remained largely inaccessible to precise genetic engineering. Current approaches are limited and can introduce unintended changes, restricting their use in both research and potential therapies.
The wider ARIA programme aims to overcome these barriers and make mitochondrial DNA as accessible to genetic engineering as the rest of the genome.
Developing new tools for mitochondrial DNA editing
Dr Stewart's project will explore whether Gibson Assembly, a well-established laboratory technique used to precisely join pieces of DNA, can be adapted to work inside mitochondria.
The team will investigate ways to deliver new DNA into mitochondria and support the molecular machinery needed to assemble it. By testing and comparing several approaches, researchers hope to establish whether precise mitochondrial DNA editing can be achieved reliably in cells and, ultimately, in living systems.
In the longer term, the team aims to develop a system that can be delivered using messenger RNA (mRNA), providing a temporary set of instructions to the cell without permanently adding editing machinery to its genome.
Advancing mitochondrial disease research
The research is expected to have significant benefits for scientists studying mitochondrial disease.
If successful, the new techniques could enable researchers to create more accurate models of mitochondrial DNA disorders. These models would provide powerful new tools for understanding how mitochondrial diseases develop and identifying potential treatment strategies.
While the work remains at an early stage, the longer-term ambition is that precise and controllable mitochondrial DNA editing could one day support the development of gene-editing therapies for conditions caused by mitochondrial DNA mutations.
Dr Jim Stewart said:
"This funding gives us an opportunity to explore entirely new approaches to a problem that has challenged scientists for decades. While we can now edit much of the human genome with increasing precision, mitochondrial DNA has remained beyond our reach.
By developing new tools to manipulate mitochondrial DNA, we hope to create better models of mitochondrial disease and answer fundamental questions about how these conditions arise. In the longer term, this research could help lay the foundations for new therapeutic approaches for patients affected by mitochondrial DNA disorders."