Display Settings:

Format

Send to:

Choose Destination
We are sorry, but NCBI web applications do not support your browser and may not function properly. More information
    Science. 2010 Sep 17;329(5998):1492-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1188015.

    Evidence for an alternative glycolytic pathway in rapidly proliferating cells.

    Source

    Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

    Abstract

    Proliferating cells, including cancer cells, require altered metabolism to efficiently incorporate nutrients such as glucose into biomass. The M2 isoform of pyruvate kinase (PKM2) promotes the metabolism of glucose by aerobic glycolysis and contributes to anabolic metabolism. Paradoxically, decreased pyruvate kinase enzyme activity accompanies the expression of PKM2 in rapidly dividing cancer cells and tissues. We demonstrate that phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP), the substrate for pyruvate kinase in cells, can act as a phosphate donor in mammalian cells because PEP participates in the phosphorylation of the glycolytic enzyme phosphoglycerate mutase (PGAM1) in PKM2-expressing cells. We used mass spectrometry to show that the phosphate from PEP is transferred to the catalytic histidine (His11) on human PGAM1. This reaction occurred at physiological concentrations of PEP and produced pyruvate in the absence of PKM2 activity. The presence of histidine-phosphorylated PGAM1 correlated with the expression of PKM2 in cancer cell lines and tumor tissues. Thus, decreased pyruvate kinase activity in PKM2-expressing cells allows PEP-dependent histidine phosphorylation of PGAM1 and may provide an alternate glycolytic pathway that decouples adenosine triphosphate production from PEP-mediated phosphotransfer, allowing for the high rate of glycolysis to support the anabolic metabolism observed in many proliferating cells.

    Comment in

    PMID:
    20847263
    [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
    PMCID:
    PMC3030121
    Free PMC Article

    Images from this publication.See all images (5)Free text

    Fig. 1
    Fig. 2
    Fig. 3
    Fig. 4
    Fig. 5

    Publication Types, MeSH Terms, Substances, Grant Support

    Publication Types

    MeSH Terms

    Substances

    Grant Support

      Supplemental Content

      Icon for HighWire Icon for PubMed Central

      Save items

      Recent activity

      Your browsing activity is empty.

      Activity recording is turned off.

      Turn recording back on

      See more...
      Write to the Help Desk