Combined quantitative immuno- and enzyme cytochemistry of cytochrome c oxidase in sections of neural tissue and cultured cells

Immuno- and enzyme cytochemical procedures were tested for their applicability to determine quantitatively the concentration and the activity of cytochrome c oxidase (COX) in tissue sections of fish spinal cord and sections of cultured human Molt-4 cells. Sections of gelatin gels containing known amounts of human skeletal muscle COX served as standard sections. The selected procedures fulfilled an important criterion for valid quantitative cytochemistry: the amount of final reaction product was linearly related with section thickness. When the immuno- and enzyme cytochemical methods were applied to sections of fish spinal neurons or cultured human cells, the COX concentration appeared to correlate significantly with COX activity. These cytochemical methods might therefore be valuable to detect differences in molecular COX activities between individual cell types as may occur in tissue sections of biopsies taken from patients with mitochondrial dysfunctions.