Research Paper Volume 9, Issue 4 pp 1096—1129

Figure 2. Mitochondrial physiology. Respiration of isolated mitochondria was measured by high-resolution respirometry using substrates providing electron flow from carbohydrate based substrates (glutamate, malate, succinate) (A, C) and lipid substrates (palmitoyl carnitine, malate) (B, D). Older adults exhibited lower skeletal muscle mitochondrial oxidative capacity compared to young adults, with no effect of n3-PUFA supplementation regardless of whether respiration was expressed per tissue wet weight (A, B) or mitochondrial protein content (C, D). Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was measured by spectrofluorometric monitoring of Amplex Red oxidation (E, F). ROS production was similar in young and old at baseline, but n3-PUFA significantly decreased ROS production in older adults when expressed per tissue wet weight (E) and normalized to mitochondrial protein content (F). JO₂; mitochondrial oxygen consumption. Cyto c; cytochrome c, control of mitochondrial membrane integrity, FCCP; carbonyl cyanide-p-trifluoro-methoxy-phenyl-hydrazone, a chemical uncoupler, AA; Antimycin A, complex III inhibitor. GM; glutamate+malate. GMS; glutamate+malate+succinate. * Significantly (p≤0.05) different from young. # Significantly different from old baseline. Data bars are mean ± SEM.