ObjectivesHistone acetylation is an important epigenetic modification that regulates various biological processes and cell homeostasis. Acetyl-CoA, a hub molecule of metabolism, is the substrate for histone acetylation, thus linking metabolism with epigenetic regulation. However, still relatively little is known about the dynamics of histone acetylation and its dependence on metabolic processes, due to the lack of integrated methods that can capture site-specific histone acetylation and deacetylation reactions together with the dynamics of acetyl-CoA synthesis. MethodsIn this study, we present a novel proteo-metabo-flux approach that combines mass spectrometry-based metabolic flux analysis of acetyl-CoA and histone acetylation with computational modelling. We developed a mathematical model to describe metabolic label incorporation into acetyl-CoA and histone acetylation based on experimentally measured relative abundances. ResultsWe demonstrate that our approach is able to determine acetyl-CoA synthesis dynamics and site-specific histone acetylation and deacetylation reaction rate constants, and that consideration of the metabolically labelled acetyl-CoA fraction is essential for accurate determination of histone acetylation dynamics. Furthermore, we show that without correction, changes in metabolic fluxes would be misinterpreted as changes in histone acetylation dynamics, whereas our proteo-metabo-flux approach allows to distinguish between the two processes. ConclusionsOur proteo-metabo-flux approach expands the repertoire of metabolic flux analysis and cross-omics and represents a valuable approach to study the regulatory interplay between metabolism and epigenetic regulation by histone acetylation.
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