We believe their may be extrusion of mitochondria out of the cell and that their s an autoimmune response to these extrusions. Is their an assay or test we could use to look at that autoimmunity?
Thanks
One idea is to isolate sera from your mice and see if they have antibodies to mitochondria. I would recommend the Kallestad Hep-2 kit from Biorad. This is designed to test for anti-nuclear antibodies, but the manual describes other autoantibodies you might observe including those to organelles. Anti-nuclear antibodies might also arise as a secondary effect in your mice. Just substitute a fluorescent anti-mouse Ig secondary antibody for the one in the kit. The only caution is that you may need a large cohort of both experimental and control mice (probably at least 20 of each) for statistical significance because autoantibodies do show up in control mice.
One idea is to isolate sera from your mice and see if they have antibodies to mitochondria. I would recommend the Kallestad Hep-2 kit from Biorad. This is designed to test for anti-nuclear antibodies, but the manual describes other autoantibodies you might observe including those to organelles. Anti-nuclear antibodies might also arise as a secondary effect in your mice. Just substitute a fluorescent anti-mouse Ig secondary antibody for the one in the kit. The only caution is that you may need a large cohort of both experimental and control mice (probably at least 20 of each) for statistical significance because autoantibodies do show up in control mice.
Good suggestion by Michael. You could also think about transmission electron microscopy of thin tissue sections with subsequent immuno gold detection of antibodies bound to mitochondrial structures.
Regards, Christian
the production of anticardiolipin antibodies has been considered one form of autoimmunity against mitochondria. Please see:
https://www.google.com.hk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=anti-cardiolipin+detection