Ethidium Bromide

[John Alsobrook]

Well, I found these four refs in the "older" literature on Ethidium Bromide,
but unfortunately only one had an abstract available online. The abstract
is enough to convince me not to drink Ethidium Bromide, and to doubt any
stories about someone drinking a batch...


AU  - Higgins ES, Dunlavey BL, Friend WH, Rogers KS
TI  - Ethidium bromide inhibits mitochondrial phosphorylating oxidation.
SO  - Proceedings of the Society For Experimental Biology & Medicine 1975
      Sep;149(4):1055-8
AB  - Ethidium bromide, in addition to combination with mitochondrial
      nucleic acids, is a phosphorylation inhibitor during glutamate and
      succinate respiration by mitochondria. Exhaustive washing of
      ethidium bromide-treated mitochondria did not relieve the inhibition
      nor significantly decrease the amount of bound dye. Dialysis against
      a cation exchange resin at 3 degrees for 17 hr removed about 97% of
      bound dye. This restored phosphorylating capacity to that of
      untreated mitochondria which had also been dialyzed against the
      resin. Since state 3 respiration was diminished and state 4 was
      unaffected by the presence of the acridine dye, and since neither
      swelling of mitochondria nor release of latent ATPase was observed,
      then ethidium bromide was not an electron transport inhibitor nor an
      uncoupler of oxidative phosphorylation. Inhibition of metabolic
      processes by ethidium bromide may be due in part to depressed
      generation of mitochondrial ATP.

AU  - King ME, Godman GC, King DW
TI  - Respiratory enzymes and mitochondrial morphology of HeLa and L cells
      treated with chloramphenicol and ethidium bromide.
SO  - Journal of Cell Biology 1972 Apr;53(1):127-42

AU  - Khan A, Hill JM
TI  - Immunosuppression with ethidium bromide: effect on lymphocyte
      blastogenesis and antibody plaque forming spleen cells.
SO  - Experimental Hematology 1973;1(2):119-22

AU  - Darke C, Gay E
TI  - An evaluation of the ethidium bromide microcytotoxicity test.
SO  - Journal of Immunological Methods 1974 Mar;4(2):161-72


* John Alsobrook    Child Study Center    Yale University School of Medicine *
* internet: alsobrook at biomed.med.yale.edu / bitnet: alsobrook at yalemed.bitnet *
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