ALAS1, the rate limiting step of heme biosynthesis, has previously been identified as a ClpP substrate (Kubota et al., 2016; Whitman et al., 2018; Wong and Houry, 2019) and loss of heme biosynthesis has been implicated as a metabolic vulnerability in acute myeloid leukemia (Lin et al., 2020). Here, CLPP is linked to acute myeloid leukemia.