Mitochondria are double-membrane bound organelles best known for their role in energy production through oxidative phosphorylation. They possess their own genetic material, encoding for key ox-phos proteins. Thus, they must divide to proliferate, which they do asynchronously from their host cell cycle. How do they ensure maintenance and homeostasiswithout an internal cytoskeleton or known molecular rulers? We discovered patterns underlying their division and genome organization. The intermittent dynamics of these processes imply that a constant imaging speed may miss important features. Thus, we developed event-driven acquisitions, an adaptive microscope control that uses neural networks to enrich datasets for events of interest. Our studies reveal a role for the elasto-capillary instability in these fundamental processes.