Studies on mitochondrial and bacterial electron transport.

The work in this thesis was originally directed towards a comparison of mitochondrial electron transport systems rendered artificially deficient in ubiquinone with those systems which did not possess ubiquinone, described by other workers. The results summarized in Chapter 4 however, show that contrary to these claims the tissues of lower vertebrates such as Elasmobranchs do in fact contain ubiquinone at concentrations comparable with those of other respiratory components. Furthermore, work on systems rendered deficient in ubiquinone by various solvent extraction techniques led to doubts as to the validity and usefulness of studies on such systems (Chapter 3). It was decided therefore to start work on another problem, the electron transport system of Acetobacter suboxydans, to form part of a detailed and systematic investigation of bacterial electron transport systems already being undertaken in this laboratory. This work is described in Part II.