PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Cell. Neurosci.
Sec. Non-Neuronal Cells
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fncel.2025.1661231
This article is part of the Research TopicNeuronal and glial studies in human brain tissue: research perspectives and ethical considerationsView all articles
Underestimation of Mitochondrial Respiratory Capacity in Grey Matter Voxels of the Human Brain Map Due to Limited OXPHOS and TCA in Astrocytes
Provisionally accepted
- Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
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Considering that the aerobic energetic landscape of the brain is shaped by its mitochondria, Mosharov et al generated an atlas of mitochondrial content and enzymatic OXPHOS activities at a resolution comparable to MRI by physically voxelizing frozen human brain tissue. However, astrocytes in the adult human brain lack expression of several TCA cycle and OXPHOS enzymes. Therefore, their formula expressing mitochondrial respiratory capacity (MRC) -defined as tissue respiratory capacity normalized to mitochondrial density-underestimates actual values by a factor proportional to the square root of the fraction of respiration-capable cells (primarily neurons) in grey matter voxels.
Keywords: Mitochondria, Astrocytes, MRI, OxPhos, Respiratory capacity, Neurons
Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 24 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chinopoulos. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Christos Chinopoulos, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
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