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Intramitochondrial ATP and cell functions

I. growing yeast cells depleted of intramitochondrial ATP are losing mitochondrial genes

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Summary

Cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae were depleted of intramitochondrial ATP by growing on a glucose-containing medium in the presence of antimycin A and bogkrekic acid. Antimycin A prevented ATP synthesis inside mitochondria by oxidative phosphorylation and bongkrekic acid inhibited import of glycol ytically-produced ATP from the cytosol into mitochondria. Growth of the cells containing ATP depleted mitochondria was accompanied by the following events

  1. 1.

    Mitochondrial genes were being continually lost from growing cells. The loss was random independently of whether the genes were located in the polar or the non-polar regions of the mitochondrial genome.

  2. 2.

    The growing cells were being continuously converted into cytoplasmic respiration-deficient (petite) mutants. The number of mutants was raising rapidly and could be expressed as a power function of the total number of cells.

  3. 3.

    Most of the ensuing petite mutants retained some of their mitochondrial genetic markers and suppressed the respiration-competent genotype in diploids which had been formed in crosses of the mutants with wild-type strains. This indicates that the mutants contained mitochondrial DNA and could not be produced as a suit of a simple dilution of mitochondrial DNA out of the cells lacking intramitochondrial ATP.

  4. 4.

    When the growing cells lacking intramitochondrial ATP were crossed to strains which had not been energy-depleted transmission of mitochondrial genes from the depleted cells and frequency of recombinants were generally diminishing in accord with the assumption that the shortage in intramitochondrial energy led to decrease in input of mitochondrial alleles into the common mating pool.

  5. 4.

    No respiration-deficient mutants were formed in culture of cells lacking intramitochondrial ATP under non-growing conditions.

The events may be accounted for as a reaction of mitochondria to starvation for an energy source consisting in multiple random excisions of genes from the complete genophore in the form of elements that could spread away, replicate and reinsert into other genophores. The process may be considered as a remnant of an adaptive response of a common gene pool to a situation of emergency.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Food Research Institute, 89813 Bratislava

    Julius Šubík & Gizela Takácsová

  2. Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Animal Physiology, 90028, Ivanka pri Dunaji, Czechoslovakia

    Ladislav Kováč

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  1. Julius Šubík
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  2. Gizela Takácsová
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  3. Ladislav Kováč
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Šubík, J., Takácsová, G. & Kováč, L. Intramitochondrial ATP and cell functions. Molec. Gen. Genet. 166, 103–116 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00379735

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00379735

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