Investigations on the turnover of adrenocortical mitochondria. V. An autoradiographic study of the radioactivity decay in the mitochondrial compartment from the adrenal cortex of 3H-thymidine-injected rats.

The radioactivity decay of the mitochondrial compartment of 3H-thymidine-injected rats was followed by high resolution autoradiography. The number of days in which the radioactivity of the mitochondrial compartment is reduced to a half was calculated from the semilogarithmic plots of radioactivity versus time. Since DNA is a very stable molecule, it was assumed that this parameter can be an estimate of the half-life of adrenocortical mitochondria. It was found that the half-lives of mitochondria from the zonae glomerulosa, fasciculata and reticularis are, respectively, 8.20, 11.51 and 8.16 days.