Revisiting the role of metabolism during development

Abstract

An emerging view emphasizes that metabolism is highly regulated in both time and space. In addition, it is increasingly being recognized that metabolic pathways are tightly connected to specific biological processes such as cell signaling, proliferation and differentiation. As we obtain a better view of this spatiotemporal regulation of metabolism, and of the molecular mechanisms that connect metabolism and signaling, we can now move from largely correlative to more functional studies. It is, therefore, a particularly promising time to revisit how metabolism can affect multiple aspects of animal development. In this Review, we discuss how metabolism is mechanistically linked to cellular and developmental programs through both its bioenergetic and metabolic signaling functions. We highlight how metabolism is regulated across various spatial and temporal scales, and discuss how this regulation can influence cellular processes such as cell signaling, gene expression, and epigenetic and post-translational modifications during embryonic development.

DNA methylation in cockroaches is essential in early embryo development and reduces gene expression noise

“…At the same time, the amount of change between ED2 and ED6 was lower in hypermethylated genes, regardless of whether the change involved increasing or decreasing expression. This fits with the results of our GO enrichment analyses, as signaling factors are rarely expressed at high levels, but suffer higher expression variations, whereas high expression levels and low expression variation of housekeeping genes, and increased metabolism, is typical in early embryo development (Miyazawa and Aulehla 2018). Our results are reminiscent of those obtained for N. vitripennis, where methylated genes were shown to have higher median expression levels and lower expression variation across developmental stages than nonmethylated genes (Wang et al 2013).…”

Lactate dehydrogenase and glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase cooperatively regulate growth and carbohydrate metabolism during Drosophila melanogaster larval development

“…Moreover, studies of the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC1) reveal that forcibly shifting intestinal stem cells towards a more glycolytic state induces overproliferation in both mice and flies (Bricker et al, 2012;Schell et al, 2017). Overall, these examples illustrate how the coordinate regulation of glycolytic flux and lactate metabolism plays a central role in biomass production, cell fate decisions and developmental growth (Miyazawa and Aulehla, 2018).…”

Drosophila HNF4 Directs a Switch in Lipid Metabolism that Supports the Transition to Adulthood

“…All organisms undergo a series of distinct biological programs as they advance through their life cycle. Changes in nutrition and systemic physiology must be coupled with these transitions in order to meet the specific metabolic needs of each stage in development (Li and Tennessen, 2017;Miyazawa and Aulehla, 2018). For example, the mammalian heart undergoes a switch from using glucose as an energy source during fetal stages to fatty acids after birth, as this organ increases oxidative energy metabolism (Lehman and Kelly, 2002).…”