Staining of mitochondrial membranes with 10-nonyl acridine orange, MitoFluor Green, and MitoTracker Green is affected by mitochondrial membrane potential altering drugs: J. F. Keij, et al.
As the head group forms such compact bicycle structure, the head group area is quite small relative to the big tail region consisting of 4 acyl chains. Based on this special structure, the fluorescent mitochondrial indicator, nonyl acridine orange (NAO) was introduced in 1982,[6] and was later found to target mitochondria by binding to CL. NAO has a very large head and small tail structure which can compensate with cardiolipin’s small head large tail structure, and arrange in a highly ordered way.