The researcher of the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, IBM Research in New York, Pablo Meyer, explained in a special seminar on 16 February his research on the regulation of cellular metabolism based on the distribution of enzymes and mitochondria in the cytoplasm.

Meyer and his team have shown in E.coli that the location and distribution of enzymes that catalyze cellular metabolic pathways may serve to indicate the metabolic state of the cell. “In the 50” explained Meyer “we studied the biochemical reactions in vitro: synthesis of lipids, amino acids, sugars … The next step is to understand how all these reactions occur together in the cell. We look for ways to measure these flows of nutrients in living cells”.

The working hypothesis of Paul Meyer is to know the location and distribution of enzymes and thus “just ‘looking’ at the cell we can know its metabolic state.”

Meyer believes that the development of this idea may have practical clinical applications in the future. “The cancer cells show changes in their metabolism, such as the Warburg effect, to produce more nutrients and divide more rapidly. If we understand this reprogramming of metabolism, we may be able to find solutions to either eliminate cells that exhibit this abnormal metabolism, or to reschedule them and make them come back to normal”.