For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Romans 8:22
"During the holiday season, sprigs of mistletoe appear everywhere as traditional decorations. Scientists have recently discovered a 
metabolic quirk of mistletoes that sets them apart from all other multicellular life.
Mistletoe is a kind of parasite. Its leaves produce sugars by photosynthesis, but instead of roots, it has structures that pierce the host tree’s vital tissues to suck out nutrients and water.
The cells of all multicellular organisms rely on the organelles called mitochondria to make their biochemical fuel — all multicellular organisms except mistletoes, that is. Not only do their mitochondria produce little if any of this fuel, they’ve lost many of the genes needed to make it. In the few years since botanists discovered this anomaly, scientists worldwide have tried with no more than limited success to figure out how mistletoes pull off this trick.
In all other multicellular life studied to date — and in most single-
celled eukaryotes, for that matter — mitochondria produce ATP in a five-step process. Each step is performed by a separate suite of proteins, complexes I-V. “And one of these, the very first complex, is totally missing in mistletoes,” said Gitte Petersen.
It could be that something like a catastrophic mutation befell the mistletoes early ....something that accidentally wiped out their ability to make complex I. “And then mistletoe just managed to cope with what happened,” she said, perhaps because mistletoe’s parasitic lifestyle offered ways to compensate. She is curious about whether additional genetic sequencing might let researchers suss out when the loss happened and whether the plants were already parasitic.
If it does turn out that the plants’ loss of complex I was random bad luck, then perhaps mistletoes are just like the rest of us: They’re doing whatever it takes to survive the holidays." Quanta
