Superoxide flashes: illuminating new insights into cardiac ischemia/reperfusion injury

Although the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) was first discovered almost 30 years ago [1], it did not attract significant research attention until the 1990's when several studies implicated mPTP in apoptosis [2]. Today, the dogma suggests that opening of mPTP is detrimental to the cell and mPTP activation is widely thought to contribute to disease in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, stroke, muscular dystrophy, and cardiac reperfusion injury [3]. Multiple factors including Ca(2+), OH(-), P(i), cyclophilin D, reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS and RNS) trigger mPTP opening [4]. However, whether mPTP activation feeds back to alter mitochondrial ROS generation remains unclear. We recently demonstrated that under normal conditions, individual mitochondria undergo spontaneous transient bursts of quantal superoxide generation, termed "superoxide flashes" [5]. Superoxide flashes are observed in all cell types investigated to date and are triggered by a surprising functional coupling between mPTP activation and electron transport chain (ETC) dependent superoxide production. Additionally, reoxgenation following anoxia leads to uncontrolled superoxide flash genesis in cardiomyocytes. This positive feedback mechanism for mPTP/ETC-dependent ROS generation may drive localized redox signaling in individual mitochondria under physiological conditions, and when left unchecked, contribute to global cellular oxidative stress under pathological conditions in cardiac disease. The mPTP activity-dependent cell life and death determination imposes new challenges and opportunities in the pursuit of therapeutic agents for treating diseases in which oxidative stress has been implicated such as cardiac ischemia-reperfusion injury.