Branched metabolic pathways to generate heme and heat.

Abstract

Heme has remarkable functions in mitochondrial energetics. Recently, Duerre et al. found that branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) are preferentially utilized for heme biosynthesis to facilitate mitochondrial thermogenesis in brown fat. Disrupting heme biosynthesis shifts the metabolic fate of BCAAs toward histone propionylation, inhibiting the transcription of thermogenic genes.