Abstract 409: Investigating the Role of the Mitochondrial Calcium Uniporter (mcu) in Calcium Regulation of Cardiac Mitochondria Using Transmural Spectroscopy and an Integrating Sphere

Cardiac mitochondria uptake calcium through the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU). To better understand the role of MCU and mitochondrial calcium in regulating heart physiology and pathophysiology, we developed a method to measure mitochondrial matrix calcium in beating, perfused hearts. Langendorff perfusing hearts are loaded with 4.5 uM rhod-2-AM at 30°C and then perfused at 37°C to washout uncleaved dye. We determined that rhod-2 localized primarily to the mitochondria under our loading conditions, as shown by loading in a heart expressing a GFP-tagged mitochondrial outer membrane protein and analyzing heart slices under super resolution microscopy. Further, addition of Mn 2+ , which quenches cytosolic rhod-2, has little effect on rhod-2 signal. We insert an optical catheter with both white light and 532nm laser into the left ventricle and interleaved the collection of spectra from both light sources. The perfused heart is center mounted in an integrating sphere for spectra collection. The light passes through the ventricle and reflects off the integrating sphere resulting in a near uniform sampling of the transmitted light. Spectral properties from both light sources are determined using a rapid scanning spectrophotometer. Myoglobin oxygenation, cytochrome redox state, and rhod-2 loading are determined by white light absorbance. Ca 2+ bound rhod-2 emission is determined by removing background tissue effects from laser emission spectra and normalizing to tissue absorbance. Using this method we are able to measure changes in Ca 2+ and cytochromes during treatments such as isoproterenol and ischemia-reperfusion. The use of an integrating sphere transmural spectroscopy provides us an unique method to study mitochondrial Ca 2+ signaling in perfused mouse heart loaded with Rhod-2.