BCAT1 and leukemia: In Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) stem cells, the α-KG level is restricted by the branched-chain amino acid transaminase 1 (BCAT1), which is overexpressed in leukemia stem cells and transfers α-amino groups from BCAAs to α-KG, resulting in α-KG instability to maintain leukemia stem-cell function (Raffel et al., 2017).