Browsing by Subject "cysteine"

Folate deficiency (FD) has been found to cause number of medical conditions varying from megaloblastic anemia to fetal neural tube defects but the molecular basis behind these has remained poorly understood. We studied the metabolic consequences of FD in mouse liver and brain, concentrating on transsulfuration pathway and cysteine-dependent pathways. Data was acquired with mass spectrometry based metabolomics and western blotting. We found that FD induces lack of cysteine in liver and brain, causing further imbalances in cysteine-derived metabolites such as glutathione and taurine. Changes in enzyme expression show that hepatic cells prioritize glutathione synthesis over taurine synthesis, while the brain does vice versa. We then supplemented FD mice with N-acetylcysteine (NAC), precursor of cysteine. NAC supplementation restored hepatic bile acid and blood glutathione levels of FD tissues. These results improved our understanding of FD induced metabolic imbalances and proved that NAC significantly rescues some of these changes.