Amino acid incorporation into rat liver mitochondria

Many discrepancies in the literature on amino acid incorporation into rat liver mitochondria can result from methodological differences. Some of these are evidenced by the present work: incubation temperature, leucine concentration in the medium, properties of the preparation and incubation media. Substrates are required in every system, while additional phosphate is required only in the ADP-substrate-supported system. Atractylate additions and adenine nucleotide omissions definitely show that addition of adenine nucleotides to the incubation medium is not an absolute requirement. The endogenous adenine nucleotide pool would thus be selfsufficient to allow normal protein synthesis and the real function of the ATP-phosphoenolpyruvate-pyruvate kinase system would be to provide mitochondria with actively metabolized pyruvate. © 1972.SCOPUS: ar.j