Reagents
5-Aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide riboside (AICAr) was purchased from Fujifilm Wako Pure Chemical (Osaka, Japan). A-769662 and carbonyl cyanide 3-chlorophenylhydrazone (CCCP) were purchased from Tokyo Chemical Industry (Tokyo, Japan).
Cell culture
HuH-7 cells were cultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle medium (DMEM) (Nacalai Tesque Inc., Kyoto, Japan) supplemented with 5% fetal bovine serum (FBS; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA), and 1× antibiotic-antimycotic mixed solution (Nacalai Tesque) at 37°C in a 5% CO2 incubator.
DNA oligonucleotides
DNA oligonucleotides used in this study were synthesized by and purchased from Fasmac (Kanagawa, Japan) or Integrated DNA Technologies (Coralville, IA, USA). The sequences of synthesized oligonucleotides are shown in Supplementary Table 1.
Virus production
Lentivirus and packaging plasmids CSII-CMV-MCS-IRES2-Bsd and pCAG-HIVgp and pCMV-VSV-G-RSV-Rev were provided by the RIKEN BRC through the National BioResource Project of the MEXT, Japan. Human ALDH1L1 cDNA was amplified by PCR (corresponding primers are shown in Supplementary Table 1) from Human BioBank cDNA (Primer Design, UK), cloned into pBluescriptII SK(+) plasmid, and then sub-cloned into CSII-CMV-MCS-IRES2-Bsd lentiviral vector. Lentivirus particles were produced by transfection of CSII-CMV-MCS-IRES2-Bsd or CSII-CMV-ALDH1L1-IRES2-Bsd, pCAG-HIVgp and pCMV-VSV-G-RSV-Rev into HEK293 cells, which were subsequently used to infect to HuH-7 cells. Transduced HuH-7 cells were selected with 5 mg/mL blasticidin S hydrochloride (Fujifilm Wako Pure Chemical).
Real-time RT-PCR quantification of mRNA
Real-time RT-PCR quantification of mRNA
Total RNA was extracted and purified using Sepasol-RNA I Super G (Nacalai Tesque) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Purified RNA was reverse-transcribed using ReverTra Ace (Toyobo, Osaka, Japan). cDNAs were subjected to quantitative real-time PCR using THUNDERBIRD SYBR qPCR Mix (Toyobo). Primers used for real-time qPCR analysis are listed in Supplemental Table 1. Real-time PCR was performed in triplicate using a StepOnePlus Real-Time PCR System (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Relative expression ratios were calculated using the ΔΔCt method. TATA box binding protein (TBP) was used as a normalization reference for determining target gene expression levels, and Human BioBank cDNA was used as calibrators in each experiment.
Measurement of mitochondrial respiration capacity
HuH-7 cells and their derivatives were plated in a Seahorse XF96 Cell Culture Microplate (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) at a density of 12,000 cells in 80 µL DMEM supplemented with 5% FBS and antibiotics per well and were incubated overnight at 37°C in 5% CO2. The culture medium was replaced with XF DMEM (Agilent) supplemented with glucose (10 mM), L-glutamine (2 mM), and sodium pyruvate (1 mM) at pH 7.4, and cells were further incubated at 37°C in a non-CO2 incubator for 1 h. The OCR and the extracellular acidification rate (ECAR) were measured using the Agilent Seahorse XFe96 Analyzer and mitochondrial reparation was assessed by sequential addition of 1.5 µM oligomycin (Agilent), 0.5 µM fluoro-carbonyl cyanide phenylhydrazone (Agilent), and 1.0 µM rotenone and antimycin A (Agilent), according to the manufacturer’s method. After analysis, cells were fixed in 70% ethanol and stained with Hoechst 33258 to count the remaining cells. Cell numbers were calculated from fluorescent images processed with Image-J software and used to normalize OCR and ECAR data.
Metabolome analysis
Metabolome analysis was performed at Human Metabolome Technologies (HMT, Yamagata, Japan). Intracellular metabolites were extracted according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Metabolome analysis was performed by capillary electrophoresis time-of-flight mass spectrometry (CE-TOFMS). Metabolite peaks were quantified and normalized according to cell number.
Immunoblotting
Cell lysates prepared in lysis buffer [50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.6), 150 mM NaCl, 1%(v/v) Triton X-100, 0.1% (w/v) sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), 1× Protease Inhibitor Cocktail (Nacalai Tesque)] were electrophoretically separated on denaturing polyacrylamide gels containing 0.1% (w/v) SDS and transferred to PVDF membrane membranes (Pall, Port Washington, NY, USA).
Anti-ALDH1L1 [17390-1-AP] was purchased from Proteintech (Rosemont, IL, USA). Anti-phospho-AMPKα (Thr172) (40H9) [#2535], anti-phospho-acetyl-CoA carboxylase (Ser79) [#3661], and anti-acetyl-CoA carboxylase [#3662] were purchased from Cell Signaling Technology (Danvers, MA, USA). Anti-AMPKα/β (D-6) [sc-74461], AICAR transformylase (F38 P7 H9) [sc-53612], GART (D-4) [sc-166379], MTHFD1 (A-8) [sc-271412], SHMT2/mSHMT (F-11) [sc-390641], and UCP2 (G-6) [sc-390189] were purchased from Santa Cruz Biotechnology (Dallas, TX, USA), and α-tubulin (10G10) was purchased from Fujifilm Wako Pure Chemical (Osaka, Japan). Sites of antibody binding were detected using HRP-conjugated antibodies against rabbit IgG (Promega, Madison, WI, USA), mouse IgG (Jackson ImmunoResearch, West Grove PA, USA), or mouse IgM (Tokyo Chemical Industry). Immunocomplexes were visualized by Immobilon Western Chemiluminescent HRP substrate (Merck Millipore, Burlington, MA, USA) or Pierce ECL Western Blotting Substrate (Thermo Fisher Scientific).
Cell cycle analysis
Cell cycle was determined by flow cytometry of cells labelled with anti-BrdU-FITC and DAPI. Asynchronously growing cells were pulse-labelled with 10 µM 5- bromo-2’-deoxyuridine (BrdU) (Nacalai Tesque) for 3 h prior to harvesting. Cells were trypsinized and fixed in ice-cold 70% ethanol for 30 min on ice. Cells were suspended in 2 M HCl containing 0.5% (w/v) Triton X-100 for 30 min at room temperature. After supernatant was discarded, cells were resuspended in 0.1 M Na2B4H7 (pH 8.5) for 2 min at room temperature. Cells were then washed in buffer (1% bovine serum albumin (BSA) and 0.05% Tween 20 containing PBS) and treated with FITC-conjugated anti-BrdU antibody (BioLegend, San Diego, CA, USA) overnight at 4°C. Cells were washed with 1% BSA containing PBS, centrifuged, and resuspended in 10 µg/mL 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) (Nacalai Tesque), and allowed to incubate for 30 min on ice. Cell cycle analysis was performed on the Attune NxT flow cytometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific).
Cell viability assay
MTS [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazolium, inner salt] assay was performed with a CellTiter 96 AQueous Non-Radioactive Cell Proliferation Assay (Promega). To prepare MTS/PMS solution, one volume of 3.15 mM phenazine methosulfate (PMS) (Nacalai Tesque) solution was mixed with 20,000 volume of 2 mg/L MTS solution. MTS/PMS solution was diluted into cell culture medium at a concentration of 15%, and then 100 µL 15% MTS/PMS medium was added to the wells. Cell plates were incubated at 37°C for 1 to 3 h until the absorbance at 490 nm was approximately 1. Absorbance was measured using an SH-1300Lab microplate reader (Hitachi High-Tech, Tokyo, Japan). Absorbance was normalized to and expressed as a relative percentage of the plate-averaged solvent control.
High-content analysis
All cells were seeded on a 96-well imaging plate (PerkinElmer, Waltham, MA, USA) and analyzed by the Operetta CLS high-content analysis system (PerkinElmer). For mitochondrial ROS measurement, cells were incubated with mtSOX deep red (Dojindo Laboratories, Kumamoto, Japan) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. For mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) measurement, cells were incubated with 2 µM JC-1 probe (Dojindo Laboratories) for 30 min at 37°C and then washed with JC-1 imaging buffer. For both ROS and MMP measurements, cells were stained with 1 drop/mL Hoechst 33342 (Thermo Fisher Scientific), and each fluorescent intensity was normalized by the number of Hoechst 33342-positive nuclei. mtSOX deep red was excited at 530–560 nm, monomeric JC-1 at 460–490 nm, aggregated JC-1 (J-aggregates) at 530–660 nm, and Hoechst 33342 at 355–385 nm.
Live cell imaging
HuH-7 cells were seeded on 35-mm glass bottomed dishes (Matsunami glass Industry, Osaka, Japan) for 24 h. Cells were incubated with 2 µM JC-1 probe (Dojindo Laboratories) for 30 min at 37°C and then washed with JC-1 imaging buffer. Images were acquired with the Zeiss LSM 900 Airyscan 2 super-resolution system (Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, Germany). Microscopes were equipped with an environmental chamber that maintained 37°C with humidified 5% CO2 gas during imaging.
Drug sensitivity data analysis
Correlations between ALDH1L1 gene expression and drug sensitivity in 18 liver cancer cell lines were retrieved from DepMap using the 22Q4 public data set for gene expression, Sanger GDSC1 drug sensitivity replicate-level dose data set, and PRISM repurposing primary screen drug sensitivity dataset for drug response data (https://depmap.org/portal/. Accessed on 23 Feb 2023).
Gene expression analysis
Normalized gene expression data were obtained from Pan-Cancer Atlas (TCGA) 38 for liver HCC patients. GSEA was performed to compare the following groups: patients with high ALDH1L1 expression (n = 20, Z-score > 1.2) vs those with low ALDH1L1 (n = 12, Z-score < − 1.2) 39. The analyses were performed using the HALLMARK and KEGG gene sets. The normalized enrichment score NES was calculated by GSEA software. A false discovery rate q-value of < 0.25 was considered significant. PCA and MDS were conducted using iDEP 40.