Defective muscle ketone body oxidation disrupts BCAA catabolism by altering mitochondrial branched-chain aminotransferase

Ketone bodies are an endogenous fuel source generated primarily by the liver to provide alternative energy for extrahepatic tissues during prolonged fasting and exercise. Skeletal muscle is an important site of ketone body oxidation that occurs through a series of reactions requiring the enzyme succ...

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Published in:American journal of physiology: endocrinology and metabolism 2023-05, Vol.324 (5), p.E425-E436
Main Authors: Mechchate, Hamza, Abdualkader, Abdualrahman Mohammed, Bernacchi, James Bradshaw, Gopal, Keshav, Tabatabaei Dakhili, S Amirhossein, Yang, Kunyan, Greenwell, Amanda A, Kong, Xingxing, Crawford, Peter A, Al Batran, Rami
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino Acids, Branched-Chain - metabolism
Animals
Glucose - metabolism
Humans
Ketone Bodies - metabolism
Ketones
Mice
Muscle, Skeletal - metabolism
Obesity - metabolism
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Summary:Ketone bodies are an endogenous fuel source generated primarily by the liver to provide alternative energy for extrahepatic tissues during prolonged fasting and exercise. Skeletal muscle is an important site of ketone body oxidation that occurs through a series of reactions requiring the enzyme succinyl-CoA:3-ketoacid-CoA transferase (SCOT/ ). We have previously shown that deleting SCOT in the skeletal muscle protects against obesity-induced insulin resistance by increasing pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) activity, the rate-limiting enzyme of glucose oxidation. However, it remains unclear whether inhibiting muscle ketone body oxidation causes hypoglycemia and affects fuel metabolism in the absence of obesity. Here, we show that lean mice lacking skeletal muscle SCOT (SCOT ) exhibited no overt phenotypic differences in glucose and fat metabolism from their human α-skeletal actin-Cre (HSA ) littermates. Of interest, we found that plasma and muscle branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) levels are elevated in SCOT lean mice compared with their HSA littermates. Interestingly, this alteration in BCAA catabolism was only seen in SCOT mice under low-fat feeding and associated with decreased expression of mitochondrial branched-chain aminotransferases (BCATm/ ), the first enzyme in BCAA catabolic pathway. Loss- and gain-of-function studies in C2C12 myotubes demonstrated that suppressing SCOT markedly diminished BCATm expression, whereas overexpressing SCOT resulted in an opposite effect without influencing BCAA oxidation enzymes. Furthermore, SCOT overexpression in C2C12 myotubes significantly increased luciferase activity driven by a promoter construct. Together, our findings indicate that SCOT regulates the expression of the gene, which, through the abundance of its product BCATm, may influence circulating BCAA concentrations. Most studies investigated ketone body metabolism under pathological conditions, whereas the role of ketone body metabolism in regulating normal physiology has been relatively understudied. To address this gap, we used lean mice lacking muscle ketone body oxidation enzyme SCOT. Our work demonstrates that deleting muscle SCOT has no impact on glucose and fat metabolism in lean mice, but it disrupts muscle BCAA catabolism and causes an accumulation of BCAAs by altering BCATm.
ISSN:0193-1849
1522-1555
DOI:10.1152/ajpendo.00206.2022