Rapid preparation of metabolically active mitochondria from control and hormone-treated rat liver cells.

A method is described for the rapid isolation of mitochondria from liver cells. The method involves the breakage of hepatocytes by brief sonication followed by Percoll density gradient centrifugation. Mitochondria obtained using this method are well coupled, slightly contaminated by other organelles or membrane fractions and compare favourably with mitochondria isolated from whole liver by conventional techniques.