Energy metabolism in respiration-deficient and wild type Chinese hamster fibroblasts in culture.

This paper presents a comparison of energy metabolism in wild type and respiration-deficient Chinese hamster cells. From previous work (DeFrancesco et. al., '75) it was concluded that the mutant satisfies essentially all of its energy requirements from glycolysis and in this study we measure precisely the amount of glucose consumed and lactate produced per milligram increment of protein in exponentially growing cultures. From these measurements we calculate the amount of ATP derived from glycolysis (and hence the total energy requirement for normal proliferation) to be 105 +/- 15 mumoles ATP/delta mg protein in the mutant. It is 63 +/- 10 mumoles ATP/delta mg protein derived from glycolysis in wild type cells. We present evidence that the total energy requirement of wild type cells is similar to that of the mutant suggesting that approximately 40% of the energy requirement is derived from respiration. The oxidation of glutamine appears to be more significant than the complete oxidation of glucose to CO2 in these Chinese hamster fibroblasts. The amount of ATP required by the mutant cells per milligram increment of protein is relatively independent of pH.