The inability to maintain body weight within prescribed ranges occurs in a significant portion of the human spinal cord injury (SCI) population. Using a rodent model of long-term high thoracic (spinal level T3) spinal cord transection (TX), we aimed to identify derangements in body weight, body composition, plasma insulin, glucose tolerance, and metabolic function, as measured by uncoupling pro...

Jastroch, Martin, Sven Wuertz, Werner Kloas, and Martin Klingenspor. Uncoupling protein 1 in fish uncovers an ancient evolutionary history of mammalian nonshivering thermogenesis. Physiol Genomics 22: 150–156, 2005. First published May 10, 2005; 10.1152/physiolgenomics.00070.2005.—Uncoupling proteins (UCPs) increase proton leakage across the inner mitochondrial membrane. Thereby, UCP1 in brown ...

Dietary methionine restriction (MR) limits fat deposition and decreases plasma leptin, while increasing food consumption, total energy expenditure (EE), plasma adiponectin, and expression of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) in brown and white adipose tissue (BAT and WAT). beta-adrenergic receptors (beta-AR) serve as conduits for sympathetic input to adipose tissue, but their role in mediating the ef...

Epicardial adipose tissue has been proposed to participate in the pathogenesis of heart failure. The aim of our study was to assess the expression of thermogenic genes (Uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (PGC1α), and PR-domain-missing 16 (PRDM16) in epicardial adipose tissue in patients with heart failure, stablishing the difference...

Uncoupling protein-2 and -3 (UCP2 and UCP3) are mitochondrial proteins that show high sequence homology with the brown adipocyte-specific UCP1. UCP1 induces heat production by uncoupling respiration from ATP synthesis. UCP2 is widely expressed in human tissues, whereas UCP3 expression seems restricted to skeletal muscle, an important site of thermogenesis in humans. We have investigated the reg...

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a thermogenic organ that is vital for hibernation in mammals. Throughout the hibernation season, BAT mitochondrial uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) enables rapid rewarming from hypothermic torpor to periodic interbout arousals (IBAs), as energy is dissipated as heat. However, BAT's unique ability to rewarm the body via nonshivering thermogenesis is not necessary outside...

Phytanic acid (3,7,11,15-tetramethylhexadecanoic acid) is a phytol-derived branched-chain fatty acid present in dietary products. Phytanic acid increased uncoupling protein-1 (UCP1) mRNA expression in brown adipocytes differentiated in culture. Phytanic acid induced the expression of the UCP1 gene promoter, which was enhanced by co-transfection with a retinoid X receptor (RXR) expression vector...

Investigations of variations in metabolic efficiency and thermogenesis have a short and turbulent history. In small animals, non-shivering thermogenesis and diet-induced thermogenesis have a great impact on overall body weight, and the question is whether mechanisms to waste energy have evolved also in human energy metabolism. The candidate molecules for this adaptive thermogenesis are the unco...

The molecular and biochemical basis of non-shivering thermogenesis in an African 1 endemic mammal, Elephantulus myurus 2 3 Nomakwezi Mzilikazi*, Martin Jastroch, Carola W Meyer and Martin Klingenspor 4 *To whom correspondence should be addressed 5 Department of Zoology, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, P.O. Box 77000, Port 6 Elizabeth, 6031, SOUTH AFRICA 7 Email: nomakwezi.mzilikazi@nmmu...