Fig. 1: Reaction-paired metabolites tend to share similar isotopologue patterns in stable-isotope tracing metabolomics.

a Schematic illustration of generation of metabolic reaction-paired metabolites and calculation of their isotopologue pattern similarity. b Numbers of labeled metabolites and reaction pairs found in 293T cells labeled with [U-¹³C]-glutamine or [U-¹³C]-glucose for 17 h. c Isotopologue pattern similarity scores (S_ISO) of reaction-paired metabolites (asparagine/aspartate and aspartate/orotate) in 293T cells labeled with [U-¹³C]-glutamine (n = 6 biological replicates per group). Values represent means ± SEM. d Isotopologue pattern similarity scores (S_ISO) of reaction-paired metabolites (glutamate/α-ketoglutarate and α-ketoglutarate/cis-aconitate) in 293T cells labeled with [U-¹³C]-glucose (n = 6 biological replicates per group). Values represent means ± SEM. e Percentages of high isotopologue similarity scores of two metabolites (S_ISO ≥ 0.7) in reaction pairs (RPs) and non-reaction pairs (non-RPs), respectively, in 293T cells labeled with [U-¹³C]-glutamine or [U-¹³C]-glucose. The metabolite pairs with more than 7 steps of reactions in metabolic reaction network were defined as non-reaction pairs. Source data are provided as Source Data files for Fig. 1b–e.