Isolation of Highly Purified Mitochondria from Rat Pancreas

The exocrine pancreas, an active secretory gland, is a suitable model for studies concerning the structure of cell organelles and the coupling of energy production with different biosynthetic processes (1, 2) . However, the investigation of isolated pancreas mitochondria is not often performed because of the many difficulties in obtaining reproducible preparations with well-preserved structure and function (3, 4) . This work is an attempt to find optimal conditions for the isolation of highly purified rat pancreas mitochondria, suitable for biochemical and electron microscope investigation . The small amount of mitochondria obtained is not a serious limitation, considering the recent advances in the study of the respiratory chain in minute amounts of biological materials (5-8) .