Abstract
Acetyl coenzyme A (AcCoA) is the central biosynthetic precursor for fatty-acid synthesis and protein acetylation. In the conventional view of mammalian cell metabolism, AcCoA is primarily generated from glucose-derived pyruvate through the citrate shuttle and ATP citrate lyase in the cytosol1,2,3. However, proliferating cells that exhibit aerobic glycolysis and those exposed to hypoxia convert glucose to lactate at near-stoichiometric levels, directing glucose carbon away from the tricarboxylic acid cycle and fatty-acid synthesis4. Although glutamine is consumed at levels exceeding that required for nitrogen biosynthesis5, the regulation and use of glutamine metabolism in hypoxic cells is not well understood. Here we show that human cells use reductive metabolism of α-ketoglutarate to synthesize AcCoA for lipid synthesis. This isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1)-dependent pathway is active in most cell lines under normal culture conditions, but cells grown under hypoxia rely almost exclusively on the reductive carboxylation of glutamine-derived α-ketoglutarate for de novo lipogenesis. Furthermore, renal cell lines deficient in the von Hippel–Lindau tumour suppressor protein preferentially use reductive glutamine metabolism for lipid biosynthesis even at normal oxygen levels. These results identify a critical role for oxygen in regulating carbon use to produce AcCoA and support lipid synthesis in mammalian cells.
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Acknowledgements
We thank N. Vokes and P. Ward for discussions. We also thank S. Gross and Agios Pharmaceuticals for providing the IDH1 construct. We acknowledge support from National Institutes of Health grant R01 DK075850-01. C.M.M. is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Cancer Society. K.H. is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) grant HI1400. L.G. is supported by the NIH and the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research. M.G.V.H. is supported by the Burrough’s Wellcome Fund, the Smith Family, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation and the National Cancer Institute. D.J.I. is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. O.I. is supported by R01 CA122591 and the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Kidney SPORE Grant Developmental Award.
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C.M.M., P.A.G., E.L.B., K.R.M., J.Y., K.H. and C.M.J. performed cellular experiments and isotope tracing. C.M.M. and P.A.G. performed metabolite profiling and analysed data. K.R.M. and M.G.V.H. performed enzyme assays and 14C experiments. E.L.B., J.Y. and Z.R.J. generated western blots. D.J.I. and L.G. provided support and reagents. J.K.K., M.G.V.H., O.I. and G.S. provided conceptual advice. C.M.M., J.K.K., M.G.V.H., O.I. and G.S. wrote and edited the paper.
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This file contains Supplementary Figures 1-23 with legends, Supplementary Text on the subject of Metabolic flux analysis (MFA), Supplementary Tables 1-14 and additional references. (PDF 1175 kb)
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Metallo, C., Gameiro, P., Bell, E. et al. Reductive glutamine metabolism by IDH1 mediates lipogenesis under hypoxia. Nature 481, 380–384 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10602
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10602
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