Department of Biological Chemistry, School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Biomolecules. 2020 Apr 8;10(4):568. doi: 10.3390/biom10040568.
Tumorigenesis is accompanied by the reprogramming of cellular metabolism. The shift from oxidative phosphorylation to predominantly glycolytic pathways to support rapid growth is well known and is often referred to as the Warburg effect. However, other metabolic changes and acquired needs that distinguish cancer cells from normal cells have also been discovered. The dependence of cancer cells on exogenous methionine is one of them and is known as methionine dependence or the Hoffman effect. This phenomenon describes the inability of cancer cells to proliferate when methionine is replaced with its metabolic precursor, homocysteine, while proliferation of non-tumor cells is unaffected by these conditions. Surprisingly, cancer cells can readily synthesize methionine from homocysteine, so their dependency on exogenous methionine reflects a general need for altered metabolic flux through pathways linked to methionine. In this review, an overview of the field will be provided and recent discoveries will be discussed.
肿瘤发生伴随着细胞代谢的重编程。从氧化磷酸化到主要的糖酵解途径的转变，以支持快速生长是众所周知的，通常被称为瓦伯格效应。然而，其他代谢变化和获得的需求，使癌细胞区别于正常细胞也已经被发现。癌细胞对外源蛋氨酸的依赖性就是其中之一，被称为蛋氨酸依赖性或霍夫曼效应。这种现象描述了当蛋氨酸被其代谢前体同型半胱氨酸取代时，癌细胞无法增殖，而非肿瘤细胞的增殖不受这些条件的影响。令人惊讶的是，癌细胞可以容易地从同型半胱氨酸合成蛋氨酸，因此它们对外源蛋氨酸的依赖性反映了对通过与蛋氨酸相关的途径改变代谢通量的普遍需求。在这篇综述中，将提供该领域的概述，并讨论最近的发现。
