Pyruvate transport systems in organelles: future directions in C4 biology research.

ABSTRACT

Pyruvate is a central metabolite that must be imported into organelles for specific metabolic processes, including C4 photosynthesis. Plastidial and mitochondrial pyruvate transporter molecules were recently identified the former was found based on C4 photosynthesis transcriptome analysis and the latter using a bioinformatics approach in yeast. The transport activities of these molecules were recently investigated in heterologous expression systems Escherichia coli and Lactococcus lactis, respectively. These studies demonstrated the important roles of the NHD1/Bass2-protein coupling function and the mitochondria pyruvate carrier protein complex in pyruvate uptake. Here, I summarize the approaches used to isolate these proteins and the issues that remain to be investigated.