Abstract:

Mitochondria play diverse roles in metabolism. Cellular metabolic efficiency and adaptation to environmental stress depend on carefully regulated transport of metabolites across the impermeable inner mitochondrial membrane. Consequently, dysregulated metabolite transport is associated with numerous metabolic disorders, including cancer.

Metabolite transport across the inner mitochondrial membrane is under the exquisite control of dedicated solute carrier proteins. Most mitochondrial solute carriers belong to the solute carrier 25 family (SLC25), which share a common transport mechanism but have different substrate specificities and regulatory mechanisms. Studying these metabolite transporters will help reveal how mitochondria are integrated in disease-relevant signalling and metabolic pathways. This talk will introduce our recent exploration of mitochondrial methylated amino acid (MeAA) transport and metabolism. I will discuss how and why MeAAs end up in mitochondria and explore the impact of mitochondrial MeAA metabolism on cell biology and cancer progression. Our findings may provide new opportunities for therapeutic targeting of mitochondrial uptake of modified amino acids in the future.

Bio:

Tom is a Junior Group Leader and CRUK Career Development Fellow at the CRUK Scotland Institute and University of Glasgow. He completed his PhD with Jon Lane at the University of Bristol and moved to Cologne for a postdoc in Thomas Langer’s lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and CECAD. He established his lab in Glasgow in 2022. His research group explores how mitochondria are reprogrammed in tumours with an overall goal to target metabolic plasticity in cancer.