The livers were homogenised in a medium containing 0.2 M mannitol, 0.075 M sucrose, 1.0 mM Tris (pH 7.4),

0.2 mM EGTA, 0.1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride (PMSF) and 50 mg% (w/v) fatty acid-free bovine serum albumin (BSA) (Bracht et al., 2003a). The homogenate was fractionated by sequential centrifugations at 536 × g and 7080 × g for 10 min. After two wash cycles by suspension and centrifugation at 6392 × g, the final mitochondrial pellet was suspended in a small volume of medium to yield a protein concentration of 70–80 mg/ml. For peroxisomes isolation (Natarajan et al., 2006), the livers were excised and homogenised in 8 volumes of a medium containing 230 mM mannitol, 70 mM sucrose, 3 mM HEPES and 1 mM EDTA (pH 7.4). The homogenate was first centrifuged at 600 × g click here for 10 min, and then, the mitochondria

were pelleted by centrifugation at 15,000 × g for 5 min. The post-mitochondrial supernatant find protocol was then centrifuged at 39,000 × g for 10 min to isolate the fraction including peroxisomes, which was resuspended and homogenised in 250 mM sucrose containing 1 mM EDTA and 10 mM Tris HCl (pH 7.3). This suspension was centrifuged at 15,000 × g for 10 min and the supernatant was again centrifuged at 39,000 × g to isolate the peroxisomes, which were resuspended at a final protein concentration of approximately 6–15 mg/ml. Protein concentrations were determined according to the method of Lowry et al. (1951) using BSA as a standard. The incubation medium contained 2.0 mM potassium phosphate

monobasic, 10 mM HEPES (pH 7.2), 0.1 mM EGTA, 130 mM potassium chloride, 5 mM magnesium chloride, 0.1 mM 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP), 2.5 mM l-malate, 50 mg% fatty acid-free BSA and mitochondrial preparation (0.6–1.2 mg/ml) (Garland et al., 1969). The reaction was initiated by the addition of either 20 μM palmitoyl-CoA + 2.0 mM l-carnitine or 20 μM octanoyl-CoA + 2.0 mM l-carnitine. Mitochondria that had been disrupted by freeze-thawing were used as the source of NADH-oxidase. NADH (1.0 mM) was added to 20 mM Tris–HCl (pH 7.4) medium to start the reaction (Bracht et al., 2003b). RLX was added to the incubation medium 5 min before substrate addition at a concentration range of 2.5–25 μM. RLX was initially dissolved in dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO), and the final concentration of the solvent was 0.5% (v/v). Control reactions were performed to exclude the interference of PDK4 DMSO. The fatty acyl-CoA oxidase activity was measured according to Small et al. (1985) with modifications (Taguchi et al., 1996). The assay mixture contained 11 mM potassium phosphate buffer (pH 7.4), 40 mM aminotriazole, 0.04 mg/ml horseradish peroxidase, 104 μM DCFH-DA and peroxisomes or mitochondria (approximately 0.3 mg/ml). Triton X-100 (0.02%) or l-carnitine (2 mM) was included in the reaction medium for assays with peroxisomes and mitochondria, respectively. The reaction was initiated by the addition of 30 μM octanoyl-CoA or palmitoyl-CoA. Raloxifene was added at 10 and 25 μM concentrations.