Investigations of Intercellular Mitochondrial Transfer in Neural Cells by Applied Single Molecule Genotyping

Over the past decade and a half, evidence for transfer of whole mitochondria between mammalian cells has emerged in the literature. The notion that mitochondria are restricted to the cell of origin has been overturned by this curious phenomenon, yet the physiological relevance of these transfer events remains unclear.   This thesis investigates intercellular mitochondrial transfer in co-cultures of neural cells in vitro, to understand whether neural cells placed under stress demonstrate an enhanced rate of intercellular mitochondrial transfer. This would implicate the phenomenon as a cellular response to stress.   Reliable techniques for quantitative study of intercellular mitochondrial transfer are limited so far in this field. To address this, a novel quantitative approach was developed to detect intercellular mitochondrial transfer, based on single molecule genotyping by target-primed rolling circle amplification. This enabled imaging of individual mitochondrial DNA molecules in situ, to detect those molecules which had moved between cells. Through this strategy, intercellular mitochondrial transfer was detected in new in vitro co-culture models.   Primary murine pericytes derived from brain microvessels, were found to readily transfer mitochondria to a murine astrocyte cell line in vitro. Cisplatin, a DNA damaging agent; and chloramphenicol, a mitochondrial ribosome inhibitor, used to induce acute cellular injuries in the murine astrocyte cell line. These injuries were characterised and found to induce apoptosis, cause changes in growth characteristics, mitochondrial gene expression, and alter the metabolic phenotype of the cells. A derivative of the astrocyte cell line which completely lacks mitochondrial respiration, was found to model a chronic metabolic injury.  As pericytes are prevalent throughout the brain, the pericyte/astrocyte co-culture model was selected to evaluate how the rate of intercellular mitochondrial transfer was altered, when the astrocytes were injured prior to co-culture. Through in situ single molecule genotyping and high throughput confocal microscopy, quantitative data was produced on how the rate of intercellular mitochondrial transfer was altered by injury in these models. The rate of intercellular mitochondrial transfer remained unaltered by chloramphenicol, however both cisplatin and the chronic metabolic injury model demonstrated reduced numbers of pericyte mitochondrial DNAs transferred into the injured astrocytes.   These studies demonstrate successful application of a novel approach to study intercellular mitochondrial transfer and enable quantitative studies of this phenomenon.