Phosphorus nuclear-magnetic-resonance studies of compartmentation in muscle

1. Phosphorus nuclear-magnetic-resonance measurements were made on rat vastus lateralis muscle. 2. In the absence of oxygenation, the resonance from P1 broadens, as the 'energy pool' of the muscle gradually runs down. This, together with measurements of transverse relaxation times (T2) indicate that the intracellular pH is not uniform within the muscle volume. 3. Incubation of the muscle with acetate buffer at low pH (5.2) results in splitting of the P1 resonance into two components; one corresponds to phosphate in a low-pH environment and the other to phosphate in its original environment. These observations indicate that P1 is distributed among different compartments in the muscle cell. 4. Compartmentation of sugar phosphate (mainly glucose 6-phosphate) is also indicated by this method, but no evidence has been obtained for this type of compartmentation of ATP and phosphocreatine.