Naked mole-rat brown fat thermogenesis is diminished during hypoxia through a rapid decrease in UCP1.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34815412.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-27170-2 and PMC identifier 8610999.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Naked mole-rats are among the most hypoxia-tolerant mammals. During hypoxia, their body temperature (T<sub>b</sub>) decreases via unknown mechanisms to conserve energy. In small mammals, non-shivering thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT) is critical to T<sub>b</sub> regulation; therefore, we hypothesize that hypoxia decreases naked mole-rat BAT thermogenesis. To test this, we measure changes in T<sub>b</sub> during normoxia and hypoxia (7% O<sub>2</sub>; 1-3 h). We report that interscapular thermogenesis is high in normoxia but ceases during hypoxia, and T<sub>b</sub> decreases. Furthermore, in BAT from animals treated in hypoxia, UCP1 and mitochondrial complexes I-V protein expression rapidly decrease, while mitochondria undergo fission, and apoptosis and mitophagy are inhibited. Finally, UCP1 expression decreases in hypoxia in three other social African mole-rat species, but not a solitary species. These findings suggest that the ability to rapidly down-regulate thermogenesis to conserve oxygen in hypoxia may have evolved preferentially in social species.
Medical subject headings
- Adipose Tissue, Brown
- Hypoxia
- Mole Rats
- Thermogenesis
- Uncoupling Protein 1