Measuring Changes in Cellular Metabolism by Monitoring Extracellular Acidification and Oxygen Consumption in Real-Time

The current technologies used to assess mitochondrial function via extracellular acidification and oxygen consumption rate are often designed in such a way that they ignore the impact of oxygen concentration on cellular bioenergetics. This application note describes using the CLARIOstar (with an atmospheric control unit) in conjunction with advanced dyes from Luxcel Biosciences to measure oxygen consumption and glycolytic flux in an open-flow respirometry system. It is found that this system enables measurement of respiration rate at steady state, where oxygen supplied equals oxygen consumed, providing a robust and efficient means of measuring cellular bioenergetics at oxygen concentrations which are physiologically relevant.