Rapid morphological characterization of isolated mitochondria using Brownian motion.

ABSTRACT: Mitochondrial morphology has been associated with numerous pathologies including cancer, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. However, the connection is poorly understood-in part due to the difficulty of characterizing the morphology. This impedes the use of morphology as a tool for disease detection/monitoring. Here, we use the Brownian motion of isolated mitochondria to characterize their size and shape in a high throughput fashion. By using treadmill exercise training, mitochondria from heart and gastrocnemius of Balb/c mice were modulated in size and used to investigate the protocol. Consistent with previous reports, the heart mitochondria of untrained mice increased 5% in diameter immediately after a single bout of moderate exercise (1.091 ± 0.004 ?m) as compared to completely sedentary controls (1.040 ± 0.022 ?m). In addition, no change was observed in the size of gastrocnemius mitochondria (1.025 ± 0.018 ?m), which was also in agreement with previous studies. The method was also successfully applied to smaller Saccharomyces cerevisiae mitochondria.

SUBMITTER: Palanisami A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4590767 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature