Impact of Antioxidants on Cardiolipin Oxidation in Liposomes: Why Mitochondrial Cardiolipin Serves as an Apoptotic Signal?

Figure 3

Scheme of a chain radical reaction in a system containing an azo initiator MeO-AMVN, CL molecules, and a chain-breaking inhibitor of quinol nature (based on [4, 10, 15–18]). The main stages of the process are indicated by numbers corresponding to the respective reactions, as described in Section 2. The radical products of the initiator decomposition (1) ROO^∙ initiate the oxidative cycle via formation of an alkyl (L^∙) radical (2). The reaction propagates ((3a) and (3b)) as this alkyl radical consumes molecular oxygen to form peroxyl (LOO^∙) radical (3a), which abstracts a hydrogen atom from another lipid molecule (LH) to yield another L^∙ radical (3b). An inhibitor, such as quinol (QH₂), may break the reaction chain by quenching a LOO^∙ radical (5).