Figure 5.

Mitochondrial morphology, mitophagy, and ATP concentration in TAC-operated Bcl2-L-13 (S272A) KI hearts

(A) Electron micrographs of mouse hearts 5 days after TAC. Scale bar: 1 μm.

(B and C) Violin plots visualizing the distribution of long diameters and areas of mitochondria measured in (A). Using the Freehand selection tool, inter-myofibrillar mitochondria were traced. The long diameter is the primary axis of the best-fitting ellipse to the traced pixels. The area enclosed by the dotted line in the violin plots is enlarged and shown on the right, with two groups overlaid. The histogram of the distribution of long diameters is shown in Figure S5A.

(D) Immunostaining of LC3B and ATP synthase in the heart 5 days after TAC. Scale bar: 20 μm. Images in the box at higher magnification are shown on the right. The white arrows indicates the colocalization of LC3B and ATP synthase double-positive dots. The number of LC3B and ATP synthase double-positive dots per 1 mm² is shown in the bar graph (n = 3).

(E) Tissue ATP levels measured using the left ventricle from mice 5 days after TAC (n = 6). Results are shown as mean with 95% CI. Statistical analysis by Kruskal-Wallis test in (B) and (C) and one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey-Kramer’s post hoc test in (D) and (E). All pairwise comparisons were performed. ^∗p < 0.05, ^∗∗p < 0.01, ^∗∗∗p < 0.001. See also Figure S5.