Many Routes from Glycolysis to Histone PTMs. Nature “Matters Arising” response to: Zhang et al. Metabolic regulation of gene expression by histone lactylation. (2019) Nature. 574(7779), 575-580.

Multiple histone post-translational modifications (PTMs) originate from small molecule metabolites (e.g. acetyl-lysine from acetyl-CoA) 1. As such, we read with interest the recent Nature paper from Zhang et al. 2 reporting discovery of lysine lactylation as a novel histone mark originating from the metabolite lactate. However, several concerns arise regarding the identity and source of this novel PTM.