Tricarboxylic acid cycle metabolites during ischemia in isolated perfused rat heart.

Isolated rat hearts were, after a retrograde perfusion by the Langendorff procedure, rendered ischemic by lowering the aortic pressure to zero. The rate of proteolysis and temporal patterns of the changes in the concentrations of the metabolites of the tricarboxylic acid cycle, related amino acids, ammonia, and breakdown products of the adenine nucleotides were determined. The most significant change in the amino acid metabolism was a decrease of the proteolysis to one-tenth and a large accumulation of alanine, which was almost stoichiometric to the degradation of aspartate plus asparagine. The accumulation of malate and succinate was small compared with the metabolic net fluxes of aspartate and alanine. The metabolic balance sheet suggests that aspartate was converted to alanine. A prerequisite for this would be a feed in of carbon of aspartate to the tricarboxylic acid cycle as oxalacetate, reversal of the malate dehydrogenase, and production of pyruvate by the malic enzyme reaction. Alanine accumulating during ischemia is not glycolytic in origin but occurs through a concerted operation of anaplerotic reactions and tricarboxylic acid cycle metabolite disposal. The data also suggest that the potentially energy-yielding reduction of fumarate to succinate is not significant in the ischemic myocardium.