[Isoproterenol causes changes in the mitochondrial energy metabolism in the rat heart].

In this paper we report observations on kinetic and structural characteristics of mitochondrial ATP synthase of rat-heart after subcutaneous injection of isoproterenol. The results obtained indicate: a decrease of respiratory rate either in absence (state 4) or in presence (state 3) of oxidative phosphorylation; decrease of respiratory control ratio; decrease of ATP hydrolase activity in sonic submitochondrial particles; decrease of relative content of the catalytic subunit F1 with respect to the membrane sector F0. The data obtained are in favour of the hypothesis that isoproterenol causes structural and functional alterations of mitochondrial ATP synthase.