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Functional imaging of membrane potential at the single mitochondrion level: possible application for diagnosis of human diseases.
Mitochondrion. 2011 Sep;11(5):764-73. doi: 10.1016/j.mito.2011.06.014
Quarato G, Piccoli C, Scrima R, Capitanio N
Abstract:
Functional biochemical tests are the gold standard for the diagnosis of mitochondria-related diseases. However, the availability of the biological samples from patients' tissues represents a severe limitation to the number of screenable enzymatic activities. In this study we developed a fluorescent probe-assisted microscopy protocol enabling to assess the ΔΨ(m)-generating capacity by mitochondria immobilized on a glass surface at the single organelle resolution-level. The advantage of this assay over others is to scale-down the amount of the biological sample required to test in a short time the functional activity of all the components of the oxidative phosphorylation system without loss of accuracy. Furthermore, the distribution of a given enzymatic activity can also be evaluated within the mitochondrial population enabling to measure the level of functional heterogeneity of the respiratory chain dysfunction.
PMID: 21762790
Tags: methods