Metabolite Encyclopedia › Tryptophan pathway
Quinolinic acid is a required stop on the route from tryptophan to NAD, the molecule every cell needs to run its energy reactions. It also activates NMDA receptors, so the body converts it onward rather than letting it sit around.
- Also calledQUIN
- Made inImmune cells, mainly microglia
- Built fromTryptophan, via kynurenine
- Precursor toNAD+
Three things worth knowing
It is necessary and it is kept moving. This is the direct precursor of NAD in the pathway that builds NAD from scratch, and no cell runs without NAD. The same molecule activates NMDA receptors, which is why the body treats it as something to pass along rather than accumulate. Both things are true at once, which is what makes it interesting.
The cells that make it are not the cells that clear it. Microglia and incoming macrophages produce quinolinic acid. Astrocytes cannot make it but can take it up and break it down. Neurons are the ones carrying the receptors it acts on. Three different cell types, three different relationships to one molecule, which is why where it is produced matters more than how much of it there is.
Its chemical sibling does the opposite thing. Kynurenic acid comes from the other branch of the same pathway and blocks the receptor site quinolinic acid activates. One starting material, one fork, two products that pull in opposite directions.
Three cells, one molecule
Questions people actually ask
Is quinolinic acid harmful?
It is a normal, required intermediate that every person produces continuously, and the body is built to move it along quickly. The research that gets attention concerns specific clinical conditions, not everyday metabolism.
What is NAD and why does this pathway matter?
NAD is the carrier that nearly every energy-releasing reaction in a cell depends on. Most of your NAD is recycled, but the body can also build it from scratch out of tryptophan, and quinolinic acid is the final step of that route.
How is it different from kynurenic acid?
They come from two branches of the same pathway and act on the same receptor site in opposite ways. Kynurenic acid blocks it. Quinolinic acid activates it.
Why is it in a mushroom encyclopedia?
It appears in AHARA's metabolomic map of its Reishi and Lion's Mane elixirs, which is how it ended up here.
Quinolinic acid is one of more than 2,000 metabolites AHARA mapped across its Reishi and Lion's Mane elixirs. You can browse the rest of what is in the bottle.
Open the Metabolite EncyclopediaReferences
Guillemin GJ. Quinolinic acid, the inescapable neurotoxin. FEBS J. 2012;279(8):1356-1365. doi:10.1111/j.1742-4658.2012.08485.x
Schwarcz R, Bruno JP, Muchowski PJ, Wu HQ. Kynurenines in the mammalian brain: when physiology meets pathology. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2012;13(7):465-477. doi:10.1038/nrn3257
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