Synthesis and characterization of photoaffinity probe of acetogenin, a strong inhibitor of mitochondrial complex I

Acetogenins are valuable inhibitor probes to get an insight into the structural and functional properties of mitochondrial NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase (complex I). We synthesized a photoreactive acetogenin mimic ([125I]DANA) which retained a strong inhibitory activity. The preliminary photoaffinity labeling with bovine heart submitochondrial particles revealed that [125I]DANA binds to the ND1 subunit among 45 different subunits with high specificity.