Dionyssios Mintzopoulos1,2, Michael N. Mindrinos3, Laurence G. Rahme4, Ronald G. Tompkins5, A Aria Tzika1,6
1NMR Surgical Laboratory, MGH & Shriners Hospitals, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 2Radiology, Athinoula Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, USA; 3Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA, USA; 4Molecular Surgical Laboratory, MGH & Shriners Hospitals, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 5Surgery, MGH & Shriners Hospitals, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; 6Radiology, Athinoula A. Martinos Center of Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, USA
We employed in vivo P31 NMR on intact mice, in a 30% total burned surface area burn model. We examined ATP synthesis and the gene expression of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor coactivator 1 (PPARg coactivator-1 or PGC-1), involved in regulation of metabolism. Our in vivo NMR results that showed significantly reduced rate of ATP synthesis were cross-validated with gene expression analysis, showing downregulation of the PGC-1b gene expression. We demonstrated that there is high correlation between ATP synthesis rate and PGC-1b gene expression. These findings implicate mitochondrial dysfunction in distal skeletal muscle following burn injury.