Effect of various oxygen concentrations on the ATP content in isolated hepatocytes of rats adapted and nonadapted to hypoxia

It is shown that isolated hepatocytes are capable of perceiving slight changes in the envioronmental oxygen concentration. A complicated phase dependence exists between adenosine triphosphate and partial oxygen pressure, which differs in cells from animals with high and low resistance to hypoxia, the former showing a more stable and resistant energy-synthesizing function than the latter. After long-term adaptation to periodic hypoxia, the resistance of the energy-synthesizing function rises in hepatocytes from high-resistant animals, and falls in low-resistant animals suggesting a fundamentally different organization of the emergency compensatory mechanisms of the energy-synthesizing function in hepatocytes of animals of these two types. Translated fromByulleten' Eksperimental'noi Biologii i Meditsiny, Vol. 118, N ^o 12, pp. 576–581, December, 1994