A FRET-based respirasome assembly screen identifies spleen tyrosine kinase as a target to improve muscle mitochondrial respiration and exercise performance in mice

Aerobic muscle activities predominantly depend on fuel energy supply by mitochondrial respiration, thus, mitochondrial activity enhancement may become a therapeutic intervention for muscle disturbances. The assembly of mitochondrial respiratory complexes into higher-order “supercomplex” structures has been proposed to be an efficient biological process for energy synthesis, although there is controversy in its physiological relevance. We here established Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) phenomenon-based live imaging of mitochondrial respiratory complexes I and IV interactions using murine myoblastic cells, whose signals represent in vivo supercomplex assembly of complexes I, III, and IV, or respirasomes. The live FRET signals were well correlated with supercomplex assembly observed by blue native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (BN-PAGE) and oxygen consumption rates. FRET-based live cell screen defined that the inhibition of spleen tyrosine kinase (SYK), a non-receptor protein tyrosine kinase that belongs to the SYK/ zeta-chain-associated protein kinase 70 (ZAP-70) family, leads to an increase in supercomplex assembly in murine myoblastic cells. In parallel, SYK inhibition enhanced mitochondrial respiration in the cells. Notably, SYK inhibitor administration enhances exercise performance in mice. Overall, this study proves the feasibility of FRET-based respirasome assembly assay, which recapitulates in vivo mitochondrial respiration activities.