Lactate Metabolism

Definition

Glycolysis, monocarboxylate transport and respiration, gluconeogenesis, and metabolic and biogenetic regulation

Basic Mechanisms

History

The chemical basics of lactate research goes possibly back to 1780 when the Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered lactate in sour milk and named it “Mjölksyra (milk acid).” Twenty eight years later, Jöns Jakob Berzelius linked lactate with muscular exercise. During the subsequent 50 years Berzelius’ work was confirmed and extended by Justus von Liebig in dead muscle tissue, and by Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymond’s observations on lactate and muscle contraction. The concept of tissue hypoxia as a cause of lactate formation was first put forward by Arkai and Zillessen in 1891. As early as at the beginning of the last century, a systematic stream of well-coordinated in vitro and in vivo experiments by Archibald Vivian Hill and Otto Fritz Meyerhof led to the first consistent and still widely accepted theory describing muscular...