Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany and at University of Virginia School of Medicine have revealed a new cellular adaptation to starvation, in which the mitochondria of yeast cells get coated by ribosomes. Surprisingly, the ribosomes attach to the mitochondrial outer membrane with a very unusual ‘upside-down’ orientation. The discovery of this mechanism has potential implications for our understanding of how stressed cancer cells survive starvation.