SummaryMitochondria are involved in a variety of cellular functions including ATP production, amino acid and lipid biogenesis and breakdown, signaling and apoptosis1-3. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and aging4. Although transcriptional mechanisms regulating mitochondrial abundance are known5, comparatively little is known about how mitochondrial function is regulated. We identify here the metabolite stearic acid (C18:0) and Transferrin Receptor (TfR1) as mitochondrial regulators. We elucidate a signaling pathway whereby C18:0 stearoylates TfR1, thereby inhibiting its activation of JNK signaling. This leads to reduced ubiquitination of mitofusin via HUWE1, thereby promoting mitochondrial fusion and function. We find that animal cells are poised to respond to both increases and decreases in C18:0 levels, with increased C18:0 dietary intake boosting mitochondrial fusion in vivo. Intriguingly, dietary C18:0 supplementation can counteract the mitochondrial dysfunction caused by genetic defects such as loss of the Parkinsons genes Pink or Parkin. This work identifies the metabolite C18:0 as a signaling molecule regulating mitochondrial function in response to diet.

Cancer cells display high rates of aerobic glycolysis, a phenomenon known as the Warburg effect. Lactate and pyruvate, the end products of glycolysis, are overproduced by cancer cells even in the presence of oxygen. The pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) allows glucose conversion to ribose for nucleic acid synthesis, glucose degradation to lactate, and regeneration of redox equivalents. The nonoxidative part of the PPP is controlled by transketolase (TKT) enzymes. One TKT isoform, the transketolase-like protein 1 (TKTL1) is specifically upregulated in different human cancers and its overexpression predicts a poor patient's survival. This finding implicates that an increased TKTL1 expression may activate the PPP leading to enhanced cancer cell growth and survival. To analyze the functional role of TKTL1 in malignant progression, we inhibited TKTL1 by RNAi technologies in human HCT116 colon carcinoma cells. TKTL1 suppression resulted in a significantly slowed cell growth, glucose consumption and lactate production. In TKTL1 knockdown-cells, the intracellular reactive oxygen species levels were not significantly increased, whereas the sensitivity towards oxidative stress-induced apoptosis was clearly enhanced. These data provide new clues on the importance of TKTL1 dys-regulation in tumor cells and indicate that TKTL1 overexpression may be considered not only as a new tumor marker but also as a good target for anticancer therapy. ' 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Key words: TKTL1; aerobic glycolysis; shRNA; reactive oxygen species (ROS) Cancer is caused by endogenous and exogenous factors leading to the sequential accumulation of genetic alterations, a scenario known as multistep oncogenesis.1 Organotypically different tumors are often characterized by related or even identical changes in cell physiology and cell metabolism.2 A characteristic of solid, malignant tumors is the strongly enhanced glycolytic metabolism of carbohydrates even in the presence of oxygen, the so-called aerobic glycolysis or Warburg effect.3 This feature characterizes cancer metabolism as highly inefficient by breaking down excess amounts of glucose to lactate even in the presence of oxygen.3 Despite the controversy on the relation between aerobic glycolysis and cancer biology 4,5 the widespread clinical use of positron-emission tomography (PET) for the detection of aerobic glycolysis in tumors and recent findings have rekindled interest in physiological changes during malignant conversion and metabolic signatures for different stages of tumorigenesis. Although an increase in glucose uptake and lactate production have been correlated to tumor progression, the fully transformed state is most dependent on aerobic glycolysis and almost not on the mitochondrial machinery for ATP synthesis. Thus, aerobic glycolysis can be conceived as a form of tumor adaptation for conditions of reduced or inefficient oxygen supply.Although the biochemical and molecular mechanisms leading to increased aerobic glycolysis in tumors are complex and may be attributed to multiple ...

In principle, a decline in base excision repair (BER) efficiency with age should lead to genomic instability and ultimately contribute to the onset of the aging phenotype. Although multiple studies have indicated a negative link between aging and BER, the change of BER efficiency with age in humans has not been systematically analyzed. Here, with foreskin fibroblasts isolated from 19 donors between 20 and 64 y of age, we report a significant decline of BER efficiency with age using a newly developed GFP reactivation assay. We further observed a very strong negative correlation between age and the expression levels of SIRT6, a factor which is known to maintain genomic integrity by improving DNA double strand break (DSB) repair. Our mechanistic study suggests that, similar to the regulatory role that SIRT6 plays in DNA DSB repair, SIRT6 regulates BER in a PARP1-depdendent manner. Moreover, overexpression of SIRT6 rescues the decline of BER in aged fibroblasts. In summary, our results uncovered the regulatory mechanisms of BER by SIRT6, suggesting that SIRT6 reactivation in aging tissues may help delay the process of aging through improving BER.