A Comparative Study of Artificial Ceroid/Lipofuscin from Different Tissue Materials of Rats

Abstract

The artificial ceroid/lipofuscin pigments originated from different organ tissues, including liver, brain, heart, and kidney of rats, and biomaterials were studied with improved fluorometric techniques. With all tissue materials exposed under ultraviolet (UV) light, a series of similar fluorescent colors were observed under microfluorometer. Analogous fluorescence spectra were also demonstrated with a three-dimensional (3-D) front-surface fluorometric technique despite of the tissue differences. Measured with 3-D fluorometry, relatively simple lipofuscin-like fluorophores were observed from the reactions of malondialdehyde (MDA) with critical biological macromolecules, such as bovine serum albumin (BSA) and DNA. Our results demonstrated that the biomaterials from different tissues have a similar fate under accelerated oxidative/carbonyl stresses but may be differentiated by a fluorescence intensity ratio.

Keywords:

• Aging
• age pigments
• carbonyl stress
• lipofuscin
• malondialdehyde

The authors thank Professor Ulf Brunk for constructive suggestions during preparation of the paper. This study was supported by the Distinguished Professor Position Fund of Hunan Normal University, Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Normal University (531120-1184), and the National Key Basic Research Programme–The Syndrome Defined by TCM, grant 2003CB517104.