Mitochondrial shuttles
As far as I understand, there are two main shuttles used to feed electrons from cytosolic NADH into the respiratory chain, the malate shuttle (which
gives you a mitochondrial NADH for each cytosolic NADH) and the glycerol phosphate shuttle (which gives you QH2 via FADH2 instead, resulting in less
ATP generation). Both occur in humans, but in different tissues, IIRC. The question is, why do some bother with the glycerol phosphate shuttle at all?
After all, the genes for the malate shuttle are there (being as they're in the same organism and all).
Of course, the malate shuttle is more complicated, and since it involves citric acid cycle intermediates it might complicate regulation of the cycle.
Is that why?
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