Fig. 4: TNBC cells possess a rigid metabolism due to tight coupling of glucose and glutamine catabolic pathways.

a Oxygen consumption rates (OCR) by Seahorse Mito Fuel Flex performed on MCF-7 and HCC1806 cells showing varying dependency and capacity for glucose, glutamine and fatty acids as oxidative fuels (n = 5). P values calculated by one-way ANOVA: ###P < 0.001; by two-tailed Student’s t test: *P < 0.05, ***P < 0.001. b The difference in unlabelled:labelled ratios between αKG and citrate show the dilution of ¹³C label from glutamine by anaplerotic influx of non-glutamine carbon sources (n = 3). Data from Fig. 1f. P values calculated by two-tailed Student’s t test: ***P < 0.001. c Enrichment fractions of glutamate and alanine from parallel ¹³C-glucose and ¹³C-glutamine tracing experiments (n = 4). d Steady-state ¹³C flux analysis performed using data from the parallel tracing experiments, showing elevated TCA cycle fluxes in TNBC cells flux distributions generated using a Monte-Carlo resampling technique (800 iterations) are shown as box plots. e Pathway heat map summarising flux results. See also Supplementary Fig. S4.