Rate-limiting step preceding cytochrome c release in cells primed for Fas-mediated apoptosis revealed by analysis of cellular mosaicism of respiratory changes.

In the present work, Jurkat cells undergoing anti-Fas antibody (anti-Fas)-triggered apoptosis exhibited in increasing proportion a massive release of cytochrome c from mitochondria, as revealed by double-labeling confocal immunofluorescence microscopy. The cytochrome c release was followed by a progressive reduction in the respiratory activity of the last respiratory enzyme, cytochrome c oxidase (COX), and with a little delay, by a decrease in overall endogenous respiration rate, as measured in vivo in the whole cell population. Furthermore, in vivo titration experiments showed that an approximately 30% excess of COX capacity over that required to support endogenous respiration, found in naive cells, was maintained in anti-Fas-treated cells having lost approximately 40% of their COX respiratory activity. This observation strongly suggested that only a subpopulation of anti-Fas-treated cells, which maintained the excess of COX capacity, respired. Fractionation of cells on annexin V-coated paramagnetic beads did indeed separate a subpopulation of annexin V-binding apoptotic cells with fully released cytochrome c and completely lacking respiration, and a nonbound cell subpopulation exhibiting nearly intact respiration and in their great majority preserving the mitochondrial cytochrome c localization. The above findings showed a cellular mosaicism in cytochrome c release and respiration loss, and revealed the occurrence of a rate-limiting step preceding cytochrome c release in the apoptotic cascade. Furthermore, the striking observation that controlled digitonin treatment caused a massive and very rapid release of cytochrome c and complete loss of respiration in the still respiring anti-Fas-treated cells, but not in naive cells, indicated that the cells responding to digitonin had already been primed for apoptosis, and that this treatment bypassed or accelerated the rate-limiting step most probably at the level of the mitochondrial outer membrane.