Coordination of citric acid cycle activity with electron transport flux

Abstract

Feedback control between flux through the phosphorylating electron transport chain and the coordination of flux through individual steps of the citric acid cycle have been investigated under a number of different conditions of substrate availability and workloads in the isolated perfused rat heart. The transition from substrate-free perfusion to perfusion with glucose and insulin with no change of workload was associated with increases in the pool sizes of citric acid cycle intermediates except for oxaloacetate, but with an initial imbalance of flux through individual steps in the cycle and transport of anions of the malate-aspartate cycle across the mitochondrial membrane. Flux through citrate synthase initially increased while that through alpha-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase decreased. Of the components of the malate-aspartate cycle, flux through the malate-alpha-ketoglutarate exchange was increased prior to that through the glutamate-aspartate exchange and intramitochondrial aspartate aminotransferase. These changes can be accounted for on the basis of known kinetic controls of the enzyme and transport steps in response to increased pyruvate, acetyl-CoA, and NADH delivery at an approximately constant rate of ATP turnover.