Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Oct 16.
Published in final edited form as: Nature. 2015 Apr 8;520(7547):363–367. doi: 10.1038/nature14363

Figure 2. SHMT2 activity renders cells liable to toxic accumulation of glycine upon GLDC loss.

Figure 2

a, Changes in serine, glycine, and total amino acid levels over 84 hours in media of LN229 cells expressing shGFP or shSHMT2_1, measured using absolute quantitative CE-MS (Methods). Positive values (right of the y axis) indicate a net accumulation in the media, while negative values indicate net consumption from the media. b, Viability of BT145 cells first transduced with shGFP or SHMT2 shRNAs, then with shGFP or GLDC shRNAs for 5 days. Values are relative to that of cells secondarily transduced with shGFP. c, Representative micrographs of b. d, Immunoblots in a panel of cell lines with high or low SHMT2 expression. e, Viability of cell lines in the high and low expression groups expressing shGLDC_1 and shGLDC_2 for 6–7 days. Values are relative to the viability of the same cells secondarily transduced with shGFP; individual results shown in Extended Data Fig. 3a. f, Glycine levels upon doxycycline-induced expression of shGLDC_2 for 5 days in different cell lines; values are relative to cells without induction; 1.0 indicates no change. g, Schematic of serine/glycine metabolism and cell survival in cancer cells. For a,b, and f, n=3 independent biological replicates; error bars are SD. For e, each point (n=6) represents a single cell line from g. Bars are mean ± SEM. For all panels, *P<0.05 (student’s t test).