Inexpensive methods to increase cellular/mitochondrial oxaloacetate and malonic - (Mar/02/2019 )

I'm an undergrad trying to get a $1000 research grant, with the hypothesis that a certain drug is altering oxaloacetate and malonic acids effect on enzyme activity. I have found kits for enzyme activity measurements, but I need a way to artificially increase metabolite concentrations in the cell to known amounts. Is there a simple way to do this? Thanks.

A quick literature search tells me that malonate induces mitochondrial potential collapse, so I would expect that the levels in the cell are very tightly controlled. As such trying to increase them would, most likely, result in cellular death.

I'm sorry, but I don't think your experiment will work. That's not to say that you shouldn't try it; many of the greatest experiments have been done because someone didn't know the supposed limits of the systems they were working in.

With regards getting such things into the cell - you could try microinjection, there may be ways to use something like lipospheres or virus-like-particles to get these sorts of things in. The best place to start would be a literature search...