A comparative study of artificial ceroid/lipofuscin from different tissue materials of rats.

The artificial ceroid/lipofuscin pigments originated from different organ tissues, including liver, brain, heart, and kidney of rats, and biomaterials were studied with improved fluorometric techniques. With all tissue materials exposed under ultraviolet (UV) light, a series of similar fluorescent colors were observed under microfluorometer. Analogous fluorescence spectra were also demonstrated with a three-dimensional (3-D) front-surface fluorometric technique despite of the tissue differences. Measured with 3-D fluorometry, relatively simple lipofuscin-like fluorophores were observed from the reactions of malondialdehyde (MDA) with critical biological macromolecules, such as bovine serum albumin (BSA) and DNA. Our results demonstrated that the biomaterials from different tissues have a similar fate under accelerated oxidative/carbonyl stresses but may be differentiated by a fluorescence intensity ratio.