Alanine is known to compensate the lack of pyruvate in mitochondrial pyruvate carrier deleted mitochondria using its own unknown carrier. We searched the gene coding for this carrier. A screen was done using a yeast library in which each yeast carried a single gene deletion on selective media. The result did not give the gene coding for the carrier itself but allowed us to find some interesting genes involved in the alanine transport. A deregulation of the mitochondrial metabolism in cancer cells is frequent. The malate-aspartate shuttle was observed to play a role in cancer development. We investigate the function of the malate-aspartate shuttle in human cancer cell line. We knocked-down ARALAR1 using shRNA and experiments were done to see its effect on the proliferation, the mitochondrial morphology and mitochondrial metabolism in these cells. The results did not show a significant disruption of proliferation, mitochondrial morphology and metabolism.