I have a problem in my incubations with heart mitochondria in that I'm
doing incubations looking at beta-oxidation flux from palmitate; hence
I need ATP (for acyl-CoA synthase) and ADP (for oxidative
phosphorylation). This doesn't cause a problem in muscle or liver mitos,
but in heart I run out of ATP very quickly in the absence of added
substrate; most of it appears to end up in AMP rather than ADP so it
doesn't appear to be myofibrillar ATPase, unless it's going via adenylate
kinase. I can't think of a way of regenerating ATP, apart from using
pyuruvate kinase/ PEP, which regenerates ATP, but also eventually yields
acetyl-CoA, which could confuse the issue of beta-oxidation itself.
