In human heart myocytes, Ca2+ floods the cytoplasm 72 to 80 times per minute and during intense cardiac activity beats may increase to 160/min (Cheng & Lederer, 2008). Under these conditions, Ca2+ saturates the mitochondrial matrix. To empty matrix Ca2+, PTP opens and depolarizes the membrane. Then, PTP needs to be rapidly closed in order to avoid ATP depletion, MEM-disruption, Cytochrome C release and eventually, cell death (Kim et al., 2003; Morciano et al., 2021).
In contrast, organs such as the liver are not subjected to these frequent depolarizations. Sometimes these tissues substitute Ca2+ uptake as second messenger using cAMP-dependent signaling (Rodgers, 2022; Wahlang et al., 2018), so mitochondrial Ca2+ overload seems to be less likely, i.e. liver mitochondria face lower risk of Ca2+ flooding and thus PTP does not need to be as dynamic. To evaluate this idea, it was decided to compare the robustness of the mitochondrial-PTP from liver versus that from heart.
When PTP behavior was compared in mitochondria isolated from liver or from heart, reversibility of PTP opening was lost earlier and with less Ca2+ in the liver, as 30 µM Ca2+ opened PTP, increasing the rate of oxygen consumption in state 4 (Fig. 1A) and inducing mitochondrial swelling (Figs. 2A and 3A). In fact, a limited ability of liver mitochondria to reverse PT correlated with increased ROS production (Fig. 4A) and may be related to liver disease (Cichoz-Lach & Michalak, 2014; Tang et al., 2022; Zhong et al., 2008). Heart mitochondrial PTP retained reversibility under all parameters evaluated. (Fig. B, 1 to 4).
Ca2+ retention and mitochondrial swelling assays showed that even though both mitochondria are capable of loading Ca2+ into the matrix (Belosludtsev et al., 2020; Coll et al., 1982; Crompton et al., 1987), the capacity of heart mitochondria is greater (Fig. 4B) as compared to liver mitochondria (Fig. 4A). This is in agreement with reports indicating that heart mitochondrial PTP withstands as much as 250 µM Ca2+ before opening (Azzolin et al., 2010; Halestrap, 2004; Korge et al., 2011) while liver mitochondrial PTP opens at 650 nM of Ca2+ (Belosludtsev et al., 2020; Chalmers & Nicholls, 2003).
Reversibility of the permeability transition (PT) is vital as the drop in ΔΨ leads to depletion of ATP and external mitochondrial membrane disruption (Kim et al., 2003), which in turn leads to cell death. In liver mitochondria, PT reversibility was lost sometime after 30 sec (Fig. 3A) or three sequential additions of 5 µM Ca2+ (Fig. 4A). In contrast in heart mitochondria PT remained reversible for at least 2 min (Fig. 3B) and withstood as much as eight consecutive 20 µM Ca2+ additions (Fig. 4B & C). These experiments clearly show that PTP is much more resistant to Ca2+ in heart than in liver mitochondria.
In regard to ROS, in heart mitochondria PT led to a slight decrease in ROS production, while PT in liver mitochondria did not affect ROS production. This points to an important role of PT in cardiac physiology, which may not be present in the liver. Also, the mitochondrial network and mitochondrial dynamics are different in both tissues, which could be an important factor explain this (Chojnacki et al., 2023)
It is suggested that PTP function/regulation is tissue-specific. In the heart, it may work as a physiological uncoupling system that detoxifies Ca2+ and decreases ROS production. This has been described in the yeast S. cerevisiae (Cabrera-Orefice et al., 2015; Guerrero-Castillo et al., 2012; Morales-García et al., 2021). The physiologic or structural basis for the difference in PTP behavior observed in each tissue is an interesting idea that complements data of PTP regulation and function among species across the tree of life (Azzolin et al., 2010; Frigo et al., 2023). It would be interesting to explore if the frequent depolarization observed in cardiac myocytes favors association of proteins such as the Ca2+ uniporter, the ANC, the F1FO-ATPase and possibly others while in other tissues in the same organism associations are different or non-existent. In this regard, at least the Ca2+ antiport-driven efflux is different in heart where the counter-ion is H+ than in the liver where it is Na+ (Carafoli, 1987).