Tissue- and Pathway-Specific Metabolomic Profiles of the Steroid Receptor Coactivator (SRC) family

ABSTRACT: The rapidly growing family of coregulators of nuclear receptors includes coactivators that promote transcription and corepressors that harbor the opposing function. In recent years, coregulators have begun to emerge as important regulators of metabolic homeostasis, including the p160 Steroid Receptor Coactivator (SRC) family. Members of the SRC family have been ascribed important roles in control of gluconeogenesis in liver and fatty acid oxidation in skeletal muscle. To provide a deeper and more granular understanding of the metabolic impact of SRC family members, we have performed targeted metabolomics analysis of key metabolic byproducts of glucose, fatty acid, and amino acid metabolism in mice with global knockout of SRC-1, SRC-2, or SRC-3. We measured amino acids, acyl carnitines, and organic acids in five tissues with key metabolic functions (liver, heart, skeletal muscle, brain, plasma) isolated from SRC-1, -2, or -3 knockout mice and their wild-type littermates in the fed and fasted conditions, thereby unveiling unique metabolic functions of each SRC coactivator. Overall, we observed entire groups or subgroups of metabolites belonging to discrete metabolic pathways that were influenced in different tissues and/or feeding states due to ablation of individual SRC isoforms. Surprisingly, we identified very few metabolites that changed universally across the three SRC knockout models. These findings demonstrate that coactivator function has very limited redundancy even within the homologous SRC coactivator family. Furthermore, this work also demonstrates the use of metabolomics as a means for identifying novel metabolic regulatory functions of transcriptional coregulators.

INSTRUMENT(S): Quattro micro API (Waters), TSQ Quantum GC (Thermo Scientific)

SUBMITTER: Reza Salek  

PROVIDER: MTBLS30 | MetaboLights | 2013-04-10

REPOSITORIES: MetaboLights