The present invention provides metabolic regulators, which are proteins (such as fusion proteins, truncated proteins or full-length proteins) that bind to specific metabolites and which can be used to control the availability of the metabolites in cells, particularly plant cells. Proteins of the invention include one or more metabolic regulator proteins, can be truncated or full length, can further comprise a transmembrane domain or lipoylation site or can further comprise a transit peptide. Metabolic regulators of the invention can be soluble, e.g., cytosolic soluble, can be anchored to a biological membrane or can be organelle targeted or apoplastic targeted. The present invention also provides nucleic acid molecules encoding the metabolic regulators, methods of making the nucleic acid molecules, methods for making transformed organisms, including plants, photosynthetic organisms, microbes, invertebrates, and vertebrates, and methods for controlling availability of metabolites to a host cell.