Some compounds have been reported that induce biogenesis of mitochondria, for example:

Quercetin: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2013/154279/

SRT1720: http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/333/2/593.full

Chloramphenicol and tetracycline are capable to inhibit mitochondrial biogenesis:

http://aac.asm.org/content/50/6/2042.full

Dear Scheckhuber

First of all, thank you for your helpful answer.

But I wonder these chemicals acceptable methods for inducer of mitochondrial biogenesis. In other word, worry about the specific.

For example, we have a lot of chemicals which induced HO-1 expression and activity.

But, in the science filed, we used hemin for specific HO-1 inducer not days.

Can I use upper compounds for investigating mitochondrial biogenesis?

Hello So-Jin Kim,

basically you could try the indicated compounds in your experiments. However, it is also important what kind of cell type you use. Different cell types might react differently to the chemicals. Regarding the specifity of the compounds I don't know whether there are off-target effects. Maybe somebody else can provide some insights?

Best regards, Christian 

Dear, Scheckhuber

Thank you :) Specially about the comments on the cell type !

Best regards, So-Jin

So-Jin, could you please clarify what you mean by "inducing mitochondria"? You can make mitochondria work very hard by using known uncouplers (like DNP), but it won't make much of ATP.. That will also induce biogenesis - the cell will want to compensate for the lack of ATP production

Hi all, 

Resveratrol and the AMPK activator AICAR have been reported to activate mitochondrial biogenesis. As far as I know, chloramphenicol and tetracycline inhibit mitochondrial protein synthesis (translation of mtDNA) but should have no effect on the expression of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins, thus I won't consider them typical inhibitors of biogenesis. I guess hypoxia might be a better inhibitor via activation of HIF1a. 

Good luck