Grant: Master's Award - PA: RPP - Newfoundland and Labrador

Formate, the smallest organic acid, is an important yet often overlooked piece of the one-carbon metabolism puzzle. Its name comes from the Latin formica indicating its origins from ants, from whom it was first isolated some 300 years ago. Despite formate's humble discovery, research in the past 60 years or so has unraveled some of the importance of this metabolite. In the 1950's it was demonstrated that formate is essential for forming the purine rings of adenine and guanine; these are building blocks for our genetic material. More recently it has been shown in our lab that altered plasma levels of formate may be indicative of different B-vitamin deficiencies. These results indicate that together with homocysteine, circulating formate levels may be a useful diagnostic tool to differentiate between different vitamin deficiencies in a clinical setting. My future work in the lab will explore the origins of our body's formate pool and examine how this pool can be affected by deficiencies of Vitamin B12, folate, or Vitamin B2 (riboflavin). While determination of the origins of formate in the body is key to the understanding of formate metabolism, so is knowing formate's destination. We also hope to examine formate's potential to be used as a source of one carbon groups for reactions in the body that synthesize a variety of different compounds, including some amino acids, the precursors of protein, and creatine.