Final experiments with pea and toxicity of organic acids

Final experiments with pea and toxicity of organic acids

A couple of years ago, I started working with colleagues from Udine University in Northern Italy who are experts on mitochondrial respiration. We were puzzled with the fact that organic acids never killed oxic respiration 100%; there was always a residual oxygen consumption by the root tissue of about 10% of the maximum respiration regardless of the concentrations of organic acids used.

We decided to unravel the mechanisms behind the toxicity and now were are almost there. I am unable to reveal the details until the paper has been accepted and I still need to run some confirmatory experiments next week. Therefore, I have used the gradual reopening of our labs to sow some pea seeds so that they are ready for experimentation in about 5 days from now.

The results are not already given since there is no guarantee that the action of hexanoic acid is similar both at tissues level and for isolated mitochondria; the latter is what Valentiono Casolo and Marco Zancani in Udine is working on.