Given the positive physiological impacts of AMPK activation on metabolism, AMPK is a key target for the prevention and treatment of human disorders, such as cancer and metabolic syndromes (Steinberg and Carling, 2019), and plays a multifaceted role in health and disease (Hardie, 2014; Jeon, 2016; Kim et al., 2016; Li et al., 2017) (Fig. 1). Here, PRKAA1 is linked to metabolic syndrome.