Effects of acidosis and ATP depletion on cardiac muscle electron transfer complex I.

The loss of NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase activity, the activity of mitochondrial electron transfer complex I, underlies the loss of mitochondrial phosphorylating respiration with NAD-linked substrates observed during myocardial ischemia. In the present study the loss of complex I activity was found to be considerably more rapid during zero-flow ischemia in rat heart, a fast heart-rate heart, than in dog heart, a slow heart-rate heart. Moreover, the greater rapidity of the loss of complex I activity in the ischemic rat heart appeared to reflect the more rapid and more severe decreases in tissue pH and in tissue ATP characteristic of the zero-flow ischemic rat heart compared to zero-flow ischemic dog heart. In vitro enzyme inactivation studies on dog heart electron transfer complex I showed that the enzyme was approximately 40% inactivated after 1 minute by incubation at pH 6.0 in the absence of added ATP. The effect of low pH upon enzyme activity was mitigated considerably by the presence of one to two mM MgATP in the incubation mixtures. Moreover, a portion of the activity-sparing effect of MgATP was still observed in the presence of the uncoupler, FCCP. This latter observation suggests that part of the function-stabilizing effect of ATP was attributable to inner membrane energization and part appeared to have been due to a direct protective effect of ATP upon the complex.