Superoxide-mediated activation of uncoupling protein 2 causes pancreatic β cell dysfunction
J. Clin. Invest. Stefan Krauss, et al. 112:1831 doi:10.1172/JCI19774 [
Go to this article.]

Figure 1Effects of superoxide on proton conductance of kidney (
a and
c) and spleen (
b and
d) mitochondria isolated from WT (
a and
b) and UCP2-deficient (
c and
d) mice. Proton leak titration was performed with or without addition of a superoxide-generating system (xanthine plus xanthine oxidase), essentially as described previously (
30) and in Methods. Graphs show the rate of proton leak as a function of its driving force, mitochondrial membrane potential. Open squares, control; filled squares, xanthine (50 μM) plus xanthine oxidase (0.2 mU/3.5 ml for kidney mitochondria, 0.1 mU/3.5 ml for spleen mitochondria); open circles, xanthine/xanthine oxidase plus 500 μM GDP. Western blot analysis confirmed that UCP2 protein was present in kidney (
e) and spleen mitochondria (
8) of WT mice, and that UCP2 protein was absent in mitochondria from UCP2 KO mice. Proton leak data are means ± SEM of three independent experiments.