Role of glycolysis in the maintenance of the energy-synthesizing function of hepatocytes from rats adapted and nonadapted to hypoxia at different oxygen concentrations

It is demonstrated that the lactate-Po₂ dependence is the same in hepatocytes of rats with high and low resistance to hypoxia and does not correlate with phasic changes in the ATP concentration in the 890–50 μM O₂ region. Strong activation of lactate formation against the background of ATP decrease indicates that glycolysis is not the major mechanism determining the steady-state ATP level in the cell and affecting the ATP-Po₂ relationship in a wide range of oxygen concentrations. The intensity of glycolysis in hepatocytes of rats with high resistance to hypoxia is markedly increased after periodic adaptation to hypoxia but remains practically unchanged in the hepatocytes of low-resistance rats. This indicates that fundamentally different compensatory mechanisms are involved in this process in the liver of high- and low-resistance rats. Translated fromByulleten' Eksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 119, N ^o 1, pp. 28–32, January, 1995