Rua, A. J.; Mitchell, W.; Claypool, S. M.; Alder, N. N.; Alexandrescu, A. T.

Mitochondria are central to cellular metabolism; hence, their dysfunction contributes to a wide array of human diseases including cancer, cardiopathy, neurodegeneration, and heritable pathologies such as Barth syndrome. Cardiolipin, the signature phospholipid of the mitochondrion promotes proper cristae morphology, bioenergetic functions, and directly affects metabolic reactions carried out in mitochondrial membranes. To match tissue- specific metabolic demands, cardiolipin typically undergoes an acyl tail remodeling process with the final step carried out by the phospholipid-lysophospholipid transacylase tafazzin. Mutations in the tafazzin gene are the primary cause of Barth syndrome. Here, we investigated how defects in cardiolipin biosynthesis and remodeling impact metabolic flux through the tricarboxylic acid cycle and associated pathways in yeast. Nuclear magnetic resonance was used to monitor in real-time the metabolic fate of 13C3-pyruvate in isolated mitochondria from three isogenic yeast strains. We compared mitochondria from a wild-type strain to mitochondria from a {Delta}taz1 strain that lacks tafazzin and contains lower amounts of unremodeled cardiolipin, and mitochondria from a {Delta}crd1 strain that lacks cardiolipin synthase and cannot synthesize cardiolipin. We found that the 13C-label from the pyruvate substrate was distributed through about twelve metabolites. Several of the identified metabolites were specific to yeast pathways, including branched chain amino acids and fusel alcohol synthesis. Most metabolites showed similar kinetics amongst the different strains but mevalonate and -ketoglutarate, as well as the NAD+/NADH couple measured in separate nuclear magnetic resonance experiments, showed pronounced differences. Taken together, the results show that cardiolipin remodeling influences pyruvate metabolism, tricarboxylic acid cycle flux, and the levels of mitochondrial nucleotides.