Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 26, 2026
Hyperpolarized 13C Metabolic Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Imaging
Published on: December 30, 2016
Decoding the dynamics of cellular metabolism and the action of 3-bromopyruvate and 2-deoxyglucose using pulsed stable
Matthias Pietzke1, Christin Zasada1, Susann Mudrich1,2
1Integrative Metabolomics and Proteomics, Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology/Max-Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine, Robert Rossle Street 10, Berlin 13125, Germany.
Background:
Cellular metabolism is highly dynamic and continuously adjusts to the physiological program of the cell. The regulation of metabolism appears at all biological levels: (post-) transcriptional, (post-) translational, and allosteric. This regulatory information is expressed in the metabolome, but in a complex manner. To decode such complex information, new methods are needed in order to facilitate dynamic metabolic characterization at high resolution.
Results:
Here, we describe pulsed stable isotope-resolved metabolomics (pSIRM) as a tool for the dynamic metabolic characterization of cellular metabolism. We have adapted gas chromatography-coupled mass spectrometric methods for metabolomic profiling and stable isotope-resolved metabolomics. In addition, we have improved robustness and reproducibility and implemented a strategy for the absolute quantification of metabolites.
Conclusions:
By way of examples, we have applied this methodology to characterize central carbon metabolism of a panel of cancer cell lines and to determine the mode of metabolic inhibition of glycolytic inhibitors in times ranging from minutes to hours. Using pSIRM, we observed that 2-deoxyglucose is a metabolic inhibitor, but does not directly act on the glycolytic cascade.
