Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), also named cancerous hepatoma, is the most common type of malignant neoplasia of the liver. In this research, we screened the Persian Gulf sea cucumber Holothuria parva (H. parva) methanolic sub-fractions for the possible existence of selective toxicity on liver mitochondria isolated from an animal model of HCC. Next, we purified the most active fraction. Thus th...

Saponin permeabilization of tissue slices is increasingly popular for characterizing mitochondrial function largely because it is fast, easy, requires little tissue and leaves much of the cell intact. This technique is well described for mammalian muscle and brain, but not for liver. We sought to evaluate how saponin permeabilization reflects aspects of liver energy metabolism typically assesse...

The turnover rates of the protein components of rat liver, kidney, and brain mitochondria were determined. In liver mitochondria, all protein components had an identical halflife of 8.5 days. In kidney mitochondria, the water-soluble proteins had a half-life of 5.9 days which was significantly shorter than that of the whole mitochondria, 8.6 days. The other protein components of kidney mitochon...

Salvianolate is widely used to treat angiocardiopathy in clinic in China, but its application in liver diseases remains unclear. Our study aims to investigate the effect of Salvianolate on rat hepatic injury by protecting hepatocyte mitochondria. To evaluate the effects of Salvianolate on injured hepatocytes, alpha mouse liver 12 (AML-12) cells were induced with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and tre...

Benzodiazepine binding sites were studied in mitochondria of unicellular eukaryotes, the amoeba Acathamoeba castellanii and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and also in rat liver mitochondria as a control. For that purpose we applied Ro5-4864, a well-known ligand of the mitochondrial benzodiazepine receptor (MBR) present in mammalian mitochondria. The levels of specific [(3)H]Ro5-4864 bindin...

Mitochondrial enzymes involved in energy transformation are organized into multiprotein complexes that channel the reaction intermediates for efficient ATP production. Three of mammalian urea cycle enzymes: N-acetylglutamate synthase (NAGS), carbamylphosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1), and ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) reside mitochondria. Urea is required to convert ammonia protect brain from tox...

The mechanism of pyrophosphate (PPi) accumulation in rat liver during acetate metabolism was investigated. Perfusion of the liver with acetate in the presence of noradrenaline and glucagon induced marked accumulation of PPi (2 mumol/g of liver, 200 times that of control). In contrast, perfusion with glutamine, which generates PPi only in the cytosol, caused little accumulation of PPi, even in t...

1. 3-Hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.30) activities in sheep kidney cortex, rumen epithelium, skeletal muscle, brain, heart and liver were 177, 41, 38, 33, 27 and 17mumol/h per g of tissue respectively, and in rat liver and kidney cortex the values were 1150 and 170 respectively. 2. In sheep liver and kidney cortex the 3-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase was located predominantly in the cyt...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES It has been reported that some proteins are released from mitochondria during liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy (PH), but the relationship between proteins release and mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT) remains unclear. We undertook this study to demonstrate the changes of mitochondrial ultrastructure and proteins release during liver regeneration and...

Most intracellular Mn is found in mitochondria. We have used the shift in the manganese absorption edge in x-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy to determine the oxidation state of Mn in brain, heart, and liver mitochondria, as well as in PC12 cells. We compared the XANES spectra of Mn in brain, heart, and liver mitochondria over a range of Mn concentrations with those of Mn...