RESEARCH ARTICLE Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is transported into mammalian mitochondria Antonio Davila1,2†, Ling Liu3†, Karthikeyani Chellappa1, Philip Redpath4, Eiko Nakamaru-Ogiso5, Lauren M Paolella1, Zhigang Zhang6, Marie E Migaud4,7, Joshua D Rabinowitz3, Joseph A Baur1* 1Department of Physiology, Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States; 2PARC, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States; 3Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, United States; 4School of Pharmacy, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom; 5Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States; 6College of Veterinary Medicine, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China; 7Mitchell Cancer Institute, University of South Alabama, Mobile, United States Abstract Mitochondrial NAD levels influence fuel selection, circadian rhythms, and cell survival under stress. It has alternately been argued that NAD in mammalian mitochondria arises from import of cytosolic nicotinamide (NAM), nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), or NAD itself. We provide evidence that murine and human mitochondria take up intact NAD. Isolated mitochondria preparations cannot make NAD from NAM, and while NAD is synthesized from NMN, it does not localize to the mitochondrial matrix or effectively support oxidative phosphorylation. Treating cells *For correspondence: with nicotinamide riboside that is isotopically labeled on the nicotinamide and ribose moieties
[email protected] results in the appearance of doubly labeled NAD within mitochondria. Analogous experiments with †These authors contributed doubly labeled nicotinic acid riboside (labeling cytosolic NAD without labeling NMN) demonstrate equally to this work that NAD(H) is the imported species.