Reconstruction of Pathways Associated with Amino Acid Metabolism in Human Mitochondria

We have used a bioinformatics approach for the identification and reconstruction of metabolic pathways associated with amino acid metabolism in human mitochon- dria. Human mitochondrial proteins determined by experimental and computa- tional methods have been superposed on the reference pathways from the KEGG database to identify mitochondrial pathways. Enzymes at the entry and exit points for each reconstructed pathway were identified, and mitochondrial solute carrier proteins were determined where applicable. Intermediate enzymes in the mito- chondrial pathways were identified based on the annotations available from public databases, evidence in current literature, or our MITOPRED program, which pre- dicts the mitochondrial localization of proteins. Through integration of the data derived from experimental, bibliographical, and computational sources, we recon- structed the amino acid metabolic pathways in human mitochondria, which could help better understand the mitochondrial metabolism and its role in human health.