Mitochondrial development in liver of foetal and newborn rats

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INNER MITOCHONDRIAL MEMBRANE IN FOETAL AND NEONATAL RAT LIVER WAS STUDIED BY FOLLOWING THREE PARAMETERS: (1) the activity of several respiratory enzymes in homogenates and purified mitochondria, (2) the spectrophotometric determination of cytochrome content in the mitochondria and (3) the cardiolipin content in both homogenates and purified mitochondria. Respiratory-enzyme activities of homogenates of foetal liver were one-quarter to one-twentieth of those of homogenates of adult liver, and the enzyme specific activities in purified mitochondria from foetal liver were one-half to one-eighth of those in mitochondria from adult liver. The cardiolipin content of liver homogenates increased approximately twofold during the development period, but there was no significant change in the cardiolipin content of purified mitochondria. It is concluded that cell mitochondrial content approximately doubles in the immediate postnatal period. There was no evidence for an increase in the relative amount of cristae protein in mitochondria during this period to account for increases in mitochondrial enzyme specific activity, since cardiolipin and cytochrome concentrations remained unchanged and electron micrographs revealed no differences. The cause of the lower respiratory-enzyme specific activity in foetal liver mitochondria is unclear. Qualitative differences in respiratory units in foetal and mature animals are suggested.     

Nuclear protein import in permeabilized mammalian cells requires soluble cytoplasmic factors

We have developed an in vitro system involving digitonin-permeabilized vertebrate cells to study biochemical events in the transport of macromolecules across the nuclear envelope. While treatment of cultured cells with digitonin permeabilizes the plasma membranes to macromolecules, the nuclear envelopes remain structurally intact and nuclei retain the ability to transport and accumulate proteins containing the SV40 large T antigen nuclear location sequence. Transport requires addition of exogenous cytosol to permeabilized cells, indicating the soluble cytoplasmic factor(s) required for nuclear import are released during digitonin treatment. In this reconstituted import system, a protein containing a nuclear location signal is rapidly accumulated in nuclei, where it reaches a 30-fold concentration compared to the surrounding medium within 30 min. Nuclear import is specific for a functional nuclear location sequence, requires ATP and cytosol, and is temperature dependent. Furthermore, accumulation of the transport substrate within nuclei is completely inhibited by wheat germ agglutinin, which binds to nuclear pore complexes and inhibits transport in vivo. Together, these results indicate that the permeabilized cell system reproduces authentic nuclear protein import. In a preliminary biochemical dissection of the system, we observe that the sulfhydryl alkylating reagent N-ethylmaleimide inactivates both cytosolic factor(s) and also component(s) in the insoluble permeabilized cell fraction required for nuclear protein import. Because this permeabilized cell model is simple, efficient, and works effectively with cells and cytosol fractions prepared from a variety of different vertebrate sources, it will prove powerful for investigating the biochemical pathway of nuclear transport.