Based on our initial finding that the nitric oxide (NO) sensitive fluorochrome diaminofluorescein (DAF) was localized to mitochondria in cultured primary neurons, we investigated whether brain mitochondria produce NO through a mitochondrial NO synthase (mtNOS) enzyme. Isolated brain mitochondria were loaded with DAF and subjected to flow cytometry analysis. Neither the application of NOS inhibi...

Mitochondria are intracellular organelles responsible for cellular respiration with one of their major roles in the production energy form ATP. Activities increased energetic demand especially dependent on efficient ATP production, hence sufficient mitochondrial function is fundamental. In bees, flight muscle and brain have particularly high densities mitochondria to facilitate substantial requ...

BACKGROUND Substantially elevated blood D-lactate (DLA) concentrations are associated with neurocardiac toxicity in humans and animals. The neurological symptoms are similar to inherited or acquired abnormalities of pyruvate metabolism. We hypothesized that DLA interferes with mitochondrial utilization of L-lactate and pyruvate in brain and heart. METHODS Respiration rates in rat brain, heart...

Azarashvili T, Krestinina O, Galvita A, Grachev D, Baburina Y, Stricker R, Evtodienko Y, Reiser G. Ca -dependent permeability transition regulation in rat brain mitochondria by 2 ,3 -cyclic nucleotides and 2 ,3 -cyclic nucleotide 3 -phosphodiesterase. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 296: C1428–C1439, 2009. First published April 8, 2009; doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00006.2009.—Recent evidence indicates that 2...

huntington disease (hd) is a genetically dominant condition caused by expanded cag repeats which code for glutamine in the hd gene product, huntingtin. huntingtin is expressed in almost all tissues, so abnormalities outside the brain can also be expected. involvement of nuclei and mitochondria in hd pathophysiology has been suggested. in fact, mitochondrial dysfunction is reported in brains of ...

While most forms of Parkinson's Disease (PD) are sporadic in nature, a small percentage of PD have genetic causes as first described for dominant, single base pair changes as well as duplication and triplication in the α-synuclein gene. The α-synuclein gene encodes a 140 amino acid residue protein that interacts with a variety of organelles including synaptic vesicles, lysosomes, endoplasmic re...

An immunodetection study of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP-1B), SHP-2, and Src in isolated mitochondria from different rat tissues (brain, muscle, heart, liver, and kidney) revealed their exclusive localization in the brain. Given this result, we sought whether mitochondria respond to ATP and to the general tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor orthovanadate and found little or no change in the ...