Dear colleagues! I have an issue with purified arthropod mitochondria. I am used to work with plant mitochondria, tried a bit with mammalian, and I roughly understand how the pellet of 100 mcg of mitochondria (by protein content) should look like.

The problem is - arthropod mitochondria pellet that is measured to be of 100 mcg by Bradford looks 5 to 10 times bigger. Also when I solubilize that mitochondria using proper detergent amount - I see that the pellet lefts are really big.

My assumption is that these arthropod mitochondria membranes are, like Drosophila's, composed mostly of mono-unsaturated fatty acid residues and thus are much more detergent-resistant than typical mitochondrial membrane.

Are there any methods to overcome this?