Hi,

My question is regarding the environment of liver cells. Is the environment of a liver cell more oxidising than other cell types found in the body?

Many thanks.

Hi there,
Please let me know which cells / tissues are correlating to ?
Fat tissue and the blood tissue both are oxidative environment.
Guy
Write me a more specific question I would be happy to help you

Hi,

Thanks so much for getting back to me.

I work on two highly related enzymes (heme dioxygenases) both of which catalyse the same reaction - insertion of oxygen into the substrate (tryptophan). One enzyme (DO 1) is found in nearly all tissue types of the body except the liver and the other enzyme (DO 2) is found exclusively in the liver (and has not been isolated from any other tissue type - except the skin I think). The catalytic activities of the two enzymes are different in the sense that DO 1 is active only when it is in the reduced (Fe2+) form whereas DO 2 is active in both the oxidised (Fe3+) and reduced (Fe2+) forms and I was wondering whether this difference in catalytic activity was related to the cellular environment that the 2 enzymes are found in. Hence my question asking if the liver had a more oxidising environment than other cell/tissue types. The ability of the 2 enzymes to catalyse the reaction in different redox states may also be related to the availability/distribution of the substrate (tryptophan) in the body since DO 1 has a 20-fold higher affinity for the substrate than DO 2.

Any help would be gratefully received!

Can you asses or do you have data regarding the amount of tryptophan in different tissues I.e Heart Liver Brain Fat. If so maybe you can also try to find the presence of the enzimes of your interest. I guess that if you homoganate the different tissues and do western blotting a you can try to detect them.
Try to do so it seems not to difficult.