Mitochondrial complex I (CI) is a large assembly of 45 different subunits, and defects in its biogenesis are the most frequent cause of mitochondrial disorders. In vitro evidence suggests a stepwise assembly process involving pre-assembled modules. However, whether these modules also exist in vivo is as yet unresolved. To answer this question, we here applied submitochondrial fluorescence recovery after photobleaching to HEK293 cells expressing 6 GFP-tagged subunits selected on the basis of current CI assembly models. We established that each subunit was partially present in a virtually immobile fraction, possibly representing the holo-enzyme. Four subunits (NDUFV1, NDUFV2, NDUFA2, and NDUFA12) were also present as highly mobile matrix-soluble monomers, whereas, in sharp contrast, the other two subunits (NDUFB6 and NDUFS3) were additionally present in a slowly mobile fraction. In the case of the integral membrane protein NDUFB6, this fraction most likely represented one or more membrane-bound subassemblies, whereas biochemical evidence suggested that for the NDUFS3 protein this fraction most probably corresponded to a matrix-soluble subassembly. Our results provide first time evidence for the existence of CI subassemblies in mitochondria of living cells.The vast majority of cellular ATP is produced by mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS).2 The OXPHOS system consists of five multisubunit complexes of which NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase or complex I (CI) is the largest (ϳ1 MDa) and least understood (1). CI liberates electrons from NADH, channels them to ubiquinone, and uses part of their energy to expel protons from the mitochondrial matrix into the intermembrane space. The complex consists of 45 subunits, seven of which are encoded by the mtDNA and the remainder by the nuclear genome (2). Its catalytic core comprises 14 evolutionary conserved subunits (3), which, in humans, are encoded by the nuclear NDUFV1, NDUFV2, NDUFS1, NDUFS2, NDUFS3, NDUFS7, and NDUFS8 genes and the mitochondrial ND1-ND6 and ND4L genes. Once assembled, the complex has an L-shaped structure with one arm protruding into the matrix and the other arm embedded in the inner membrane. The matrix-protruding, or peripheral, arm is involved in electron channeling and contains the flavo-mononucleotide group and eight ironsulfur clusters. The membrane arm includes all of the mtDNA-encoded subunits and is believed to play a role in proton translocation (3).At present, it is still unclear how the different subunits are exactly pieced together during CI biogenesis. Understanding this process is also clinically relevant because mutations in CI subunits prevent proper CI assembly, causing a variety of mitochondrial disorders (reviewed in Ref. 4). The current hypothesis is that CI assembly occurs by a stepwise mechanism during which prefabricated modules, or assembly intermediates, are combined (5-9). In agreement with this idea, we recently demonstrated that inhibition of mitochondrial translation caused an accumulation of the NDUFS3 subunit in...