Preparation of Respiratory Chain Complexes from Saccharomyces cerevisiae Wild-Type and Mutant Mitochondria: Activity Measurement and Subunit Compositi

The mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation involves five multimeric complexes imbedded in the inner membrane: complex I (Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NADH) quinone oxidoreductase), II (succinate dehydrogenase), III (ubiquinol cytochrome c oxido reductase or bc1 complex), IV (cytochrome c oxidase), and V (ATP synthase). These respiratory complexes are conserved from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to human with the exception of complex I, which is replaced by three NADH dehydrogenases in S. cerevisiae . Here, we provide several protocols allowing an exhaustive characterization of each yeast complex: this chapter describes procedures from mitochondria preparation to measurement of the activity of each complex and analysis of their subunit composition and provides information on the interactions between different complexes.