The NADH shuttle system, which transports reducing equivalents from the cytosol to the mitochondria, is essential for the coupling of glucose metabolism to insulin secretion in pancreatic beta cells. Aralar1 and citrin are two isoforms of the mitochondrial aspartate/ glutamate carrier, one key constituent of the malateaspartate NADH shuttle. Here, the effects of Aralar1 overexpression in INS-1E beta cells and isolated rat islets were investigated for the first time. We prepared a recombinant adenovirus encoding for human Aralar1 (AdCA-Aralar1), tagged with the small FLAG epitope. Transduction of INS-1E cells and isolated rat islets with AdCA-Aralar1 increased aralar1 protein levels and immunostaining revealed mitochondrial localization. Compared with control INS-1E cells, overexpression of Aralar1 potentiated metabolism secretion coupling stimulated by 15 mM glucose. In particular, there was an increase of NAD(P)H generation, of mitochondrial membrane hyperpolarization, ATP levels, glucose oxidation, and insulin secretion (؉45%, p < 0.01). Remarkably, this was accompanied by reduced lactate production. Rat islets overexpressing Aralar1 secreted more insulin at 16.7 mM glucose (؉65%, p < 0.05) compared with controls. These results show that aspartate-glutamate carrier capacity limits glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and that Aralar1 overexpression enhances mitochondrial metabolism.Glucose metabolism, through glycolysis and mitochondria, drives stimulation of insulin secretion in pancreatic beta cells (1, 2). According to low lactate dehydrogenase activity in beta cells, glycolysis-derived electrons carried by NADHϩH ϩ are mostly transferred to mitochondria through the NADH shuttle system. Therefore, NADH shuttles couple glycolysis to activation of mitochondrial energy metabolism, leading to insulin secretion. Moreover, low activity of NADH shuttles in beta cells has been found in type 2 diabetes models (3) and is also the cause of impaired glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) 1 in fetal islets (4).In beta cells, the NADH shuttle system is composed essentially of the glycerophosphate and the malate-aspartate shuttles (5). The respective importance of these shuttles is illustrated in pancreatic islets of mice with abrogation of NADH shuttle activities. Mice lacking mitochondrial glycerol-phosphate dehydrogenase exhibit normal GSIS (6). However, additional inhibition of the malate-aspartate shuttle with aminooxyacetate strongly impairs the secretory response to glucose (6). This suggested that the malate-aspartate shuttle might play a key role in both mitochondrial metabolism and cytosolic redox state. Besides glycerophosphate and malate-aspartate shuttles, pyruvate-citrate shuttle also regenerates NAD ϩ necessary to maintain glycolysis. Pyruvate-citrate shuttle (7) contributes to the formation of malonyl-CoA and cytosolic NADPH, two molecules proposed as candidate coupling factors in GSIS (8, 9).In the mitochondria, NADH electrons are transferred to the electron transport chain, which in turn supplies th...