Imaging of Mitochondria with Orange Fluorescent Proteins

The energy released by the complete metabolism of sugars in mitochondria is used extremely efficiently, far more so than with other forms of metabolism. In the cytoplasm of an animal cell, as an example, for each molecule of glucose that is metabolized, two molecules of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) are produced as a result of glycolysis. Mitochondria, on the other hand can produce 30 molecules of ATP for each molecule of glucose. In the digital videos presented above, normal Gray fox lung fibroblast cells (FoLu line) expressing a fusion product of monomeric Kusabira Orange fluorescent protein fused to a mitochondrial targeting sequence are imaged with a combination of confocal fluorescence and differential interference contrast (DIC) illumination. Note the paths of individual mitochondria as the cell(s) slowly migrate across the glass coverslip.

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