A research team led by Dr. Kenneth Verstraete in the Unit for Structural Biology at the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research has unraveled the three-dimensional structure and molecular mechanism of ATP citrate lyase (ACLY). This is a central metabolic enzyme, a protein that accelerates chemical reactions, important for the production of fatty acids and cholesterol in the human liver. The reported findings could help in targeting ACLY in cancer and metabolic diseases such as atherosclerosis. The structure of ACLY also unmasked a crucial evolutionary relationship that radically changes our understanding of the origins of cellular respiration.