EditorialThe Krebs (or tricarboxylic acid, TCA) cycle forms a central junction in aerobic metabolism, being connectedto glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, fatty acid metabolism and amino acid metabolism ( Figure 1). Pyruvate carboxylase (PC) catalyzes the carboxylation of pyruvate to form oxaloacetate, an important so-called anaplerotic reaction to provide a sufficient level of metabolites for the TCA cycle. The breakdown of oxaloacetate to pyruvate by oxaloacetate decarboxylases (ODx) is mainly known from prokaryotic organisms where two main variants of ODx enzymes are known: a membrane-bound variant that depends on sodium and biotin [1] and a soluble variant that depends on divalent cations [2]. Far less is known about ODx activity in mammalian organisms, apart from the promiscuous activity of some metabolic enzymes [3].Many decades ago several reports about an ODx enzyme purified from extracts of rat liver mitochondria surfaced [4,3], but curiously enough the identity of such an enzyme was never clarified.Until recently, members of the FAH family of enzymes were not known to be connected to the TCA cycle in any way. The eponymous FAH enzyme acts as a fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase, catalyzing the final step of the tyrosine breakdown [5]. Loss of this function causes hereditary tyrosinemia type I (HTI) in humans [6].The prokaryotic realm provides a perplexingly large number of FAH type enzymes which, in spite of the structural similarity of their catalytic domains, collectively referred to as the FAH fold, catalyze a wide range of reactions [7]. They comprise hydrolases, isomerases, decarboxylases, hydratases and dehydratases, demonstrating the versatility of the FAH fold. Besides FAH itself, the only other members of the FAH superfamily present in mammalian organisms are FAHD1 (fumarylacetoacetate hydrolase domain containing protein 1) and FAHD2. Classification of their function has proven difficult due to the aforementioned spectrum of FAH fold activities. In a first study, the comparison of FAHD1's primary sequence with prokaryotic members of the FAH family led to the observation that FAHD1 exhibits acylpyruvate hydrolaseThis activity is so far not associated with mammalian metabolism, however. In a recent study to further investigate the cellular role of FAHD1, molecular modeling was applied to search for a close structural match between the catalytic domain of FAHD1 and other members of the FAH family [9]. This process yielded the prokaryotic enzyme Cg1458 as a promising candidate, previously identified as a soluble ODx [2].Subsequent in vitro analysis of purified recombinant human FAHD1 confirmed that it indeed exhibits ODx activity. Interestingly, the enzyme kinetics of FAHD1 closely resemble some of the values reported for an unidentified mammalian ODx in earlier years [4,3]. The mutation of key residues located within the catalytic domain, including a catalytic loop, resulted in abrogated or reduced enzymatic activity.As already observed in an earlier study [8], FAHD1 is located in mitochondria, showing high...