Rethinking the bioavailability and cellular transport properties of S-adenosylmethionine
Authors:Yudong Sun1 and Jason W. Locasale2
1 Department of Biochemistry, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina USA 27710.
2 Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina USA 27710.
Keywords:
S-adenosyl-methionine, sam, methionine, metabolism.
Abbreviations:
AUC – area under the curve,
MAT – methionine adenosyltransferase,
MTA – 5’-methylthioadenosine,
SAM – S-adenosylmethionine.
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
J.W.L advises Nanocare Technologies, Restoration Food-works, and Raphael Pharmaceuticals. Y.S. declares no competing interest.
Please cite this article as:
Yudong Sun and Jason W. Locasale (2021). Rethinking the bioavailability and cellular transport properties of S-adenosylmethionine. Cell Stress 6(1): 1-5. doi: 10.15698/cst2022.01.261
© 2021 Sun and Locasale. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) is a versatile metabolite that participates in a wide range of reactions such as methylation and transsulfuration. These capabilities allow SAM to influence cellular processes such as gene expression and redox balancing. The importance of SAM is highlighted by its widespread usage as an over-the-counter nutrient supplement and as an experimental reagent in molecular biology. The bioavailability and cellular transport properties of SAM, however, are often overlooked under these contexts, putting limits on SAM’s therapeutic potential and complicating the interpretation of experimental results. In this article, we examined the chemical stability and cellular permeability of SAM, proposed a schematic for indirect SAM transport across the mammalian plasma membrane, and lastly discussed the implications arising from such transport schematic.