Cell metabolism
The most recent articles from: August 2016
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Brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays an important role in mammalian thermoregulation. The component of BAT mitochondria that permits this function is the inner membrane carrier protein uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1). To the best of our knowledge, no studies have directly quantified UCP1 function in human BAT. ⋯ Human BAT was sensitive to the purine nucleotide GDP, providing the first direct evidence that human BAT mitochondria have thermogenically functional UCP1. Further, our data demonstrate that human and rodent BAT have similar UCP1 function per mitochondrion. These data indicate that human and rodent BAT are qualitatively similar in terms of UCP1 function.