Preservation of Rat Liver Nuclei by Potassium Glycerophosphate

Abstract

Appelmans and de Duve¹ found that the ‘osmotic activation’ or lysis undergone by rat liver mitochondria in hypotonic media could be prevented by the presence in the medium of 0.25 M sucrose; the sucrose could be partly replaced by an iso-osmolar quantity of β-glycerophosphate. They showed that mitochondria released certain enzymes as a result of osmotic activation. If deoxyribonuclease, which Schneider and Hogeboom² have shown to be largely associated in liver with mitochondria, is also released by osmotic activation, this might explain the effectiveness of sucrose in media for the isolation and preservation of nuclei. Anderson³ has shown that sucrose prevents ‘bleb’ or bubble formation on the nuclear surface, and that bleb formation occurs on nuclei treated with deoxyribonuclease.