Succinate and lactate produced as conserved biomarkers through chronic and transient substrate-level phosphorylation: from microorganisms to cancer.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review of biochemical mechanisms across species without new empirical data or systematic review methodology.
PubMed 42406156 · doi:10.1007/s10863-026-10117-x
What was done
This narrative review synthesized literature on cellular bioenergetic adaptations occurring during oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) impairment, acute hypoxia, mitochondrial dysfunction, or elevated energy demands across evolutionary taxa ranging from unicellular microbes to mammalian cells and cancer.
What was found
The abstract presents no quantitative data. It describes a conceptual framework wherein glucose-derived lactate serves as a biomarker for cytosolic substrate-level phosphorylation (SLP) and glutamine-derived succinate serves as a biomarker for mitochondrial SLP across bacteria, yeast, immune cells, retina, muscle, and malignant tumors.
Why it matters
It unifies diverse metabolic phenotypes under a shared evolutionary mechanism, framing extracellular lactate and succinate accumulation as conserved indicators of compensatory fermentative energy generation.
Limits
As a non-systematic narrative review, the paper presents no original experimental measurements, sample sizes, or quantitative synthesis. It relies entirely on secondary interpretations of mechanistic bioenergetics.