Alternative route to fatty acids

摘要

Glucose has long been considered the major source of carbon for lipid synthesis in animal cells, but Metallo et al. now show that human cells proliferating in hypoxic conditions use a different pathway to produce the acetyl-coenzyme A (AcCoA) fatty-acid precursor. In various normal and cancerous cell lines, AcCoA is produced by the reductive metabolism of glutamine-derived a-ketoglutarate through a pathway that requires isocitrate dehydrogenase 1. As well as adding to our understanding of carbohydrate metabolism, this work suggests that there may be therapeutic targets along the reductive carboxylation and glutamine catabolic pathways that could prevent tumour growth under hypoxia.