The effects of cytoplasmic transfer of mtDNA in relation to whole-body endurance performance

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between whole-body aerobic capacity and mitochondrial facilities. The mitochondrial enzyme system of oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) is encoded both by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and nuclear DNA. To identify the effect of mtDNA on whole-body aerobic capacity, we fused the platelets of the study subjects that contained mtDNA but that lacked nuclear DNA with rho(0) HeLa cells, which lacked mtDNA, and isolated repopulated cybrids. The mitochondrial respiratory functions of the cybrids, estimated from cell oxygen consumption and cytochrome-c oxidase (CCOX), were compared between endurance athletes and sedentary controls. The oxygen consumption was 18.5 +/- 3.9 and 18.2 +/- 4.1 nmol/min/ml/10(7) cells in athletes and controls, respectively. The CCOX activity was 98.8 +/- 17.5 and 116.7 +/- 9.8%, compared with fibroblasts in athletes and controls, respectively. No significant difference was noted between groups in either cell oxygen consumption or CCOX activity. These results show that the OXPHOS enzymes coded by mtDNA do not strongly influence whole-body aerobic fitness.