Detailed mitochondrial phenotyping by high resolution metabolomics

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 7; no. 3; p. e33020
• Main Authors: Roede, James R, Park, Youngja, Li, Shuzhao, Strobel, Frederick H, Jones, Dean P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 06.03.2012; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Alcohol; Alzheimer's disease; Alzheimers disease; Amino acids; Animals; Apoptosis; Biochemistry; Bioinformatics; Biology; Biomarkers; Chromatography; Critical care; Discriminant analysis; Fatty acids; Female; Gender differences; Genomes; High resolution; Ions; Liver; Male; Mass spectrometry; Medicine; Metabolic Networks and Pathways; Metabolic pathways; Metabolism; Metabolites; Metabolome; Metabolomics; Metabolomics - methods; Mice; Mice, Transgenic; Mitochondria; Mitochondria - genetics; Mitochondria - metabolism; Molecular biology; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Pathogenesis; Phenotype; Phenotyping; Physiological aspects; Physiology; Profiling; Proteins; Pyrimidines; Sex Factors; Statistical analysis; Statistical tests; Thioredoxins - genetics; Thioredoxins - metabolism; Urine; Atlanta Georgia; United States > US; Georgia
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0033020

Mitochondrial phenotype is complex and difficult to define at the level of individual cell types. Newer metabolic profiling methods provide information on dozens of metabolic pathways from a relatively small sample. This pilot study used "top-down" metabolic profiling to determine the spectrum of metabolites present in liver mitochondria. High resolution mass spectral analyses and multivariate statistical tests provided global metabolic information about mitochondria and showed that liver mitochondria possess a significant phenotype based on gender and genotype. The data also show that mitochondria contain a large number of unidentified chemicals.