Carotid body mitochondria exhibit normal oxygen affinity despite COX4I2 enrichment

The carotid body (CB) is the key peripheral oxygen sensor. CB mitochondria are hypothesised to be uniquely adapted with unusually low intrinsic oxygen affinity which, in association with nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species signalling, enables acute responsiveness to hypoxia. However, CB mitochondrial physiology or intrinsic oxygen affinity have never been measured directly. We sought to address this key gap by isolating sheep CB mitochondria and comprehensively characterising their phenotype and contrasting them to a non-oxygen sensing tissue, left ventricular myocardium (LV).

High resolution respirometry, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, enzymatic assays and in silico modelling were used to characterise mitochondrial content, aerobic capacity, oxygen affinity, complex subunit abundance and activity, H ₂ O ₂ production and NO sensitivity in ovine CB and LV. Mitochondrial oxygen affinity (P ₅₀ = 0.089 mmHg) was lower in the CB than the LV (P ₅₀ = 0.058 mmHg; p = 0.005). Whilst mitochondrial content was lower in the CB, CB mitochondria had higher respiratory rates and enzymatic activity than LV. H ₂ O ₂ production and NO sensitivity were similar in the two tissues.

While intrinsic mitochondrial oxygen affinity is slightly lower in the oxygen sensing CB than in the non-oxygen sensing LV, this difference is small. Hence, any role of mitochondria in CB oxygen sensing is not due to an intrinsic difference in the O ₂ affinity of cytochrome oxidase due to differential expression of its subunits. Instead, this work suggests that differences in O ₂ affinity in vivo are secondary to other factors, perhaps including NO, that alter mitochondrial O ₂ affinity.