Special fat cells known as brown adipocytes help maintaining body temperature by converting calory-rich nutrients into heat.
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen Sep 16 2024 This protects from gaining excess weight and metabolic disorders . An international team of researchers led by Professor Alexander Bartelt from the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention has deciphered a new mechanism that increases respiration and metabolic activity of brown fat cells. The researchers hope that this discovery will lead to novel approaches utilizing brown fat against metabolic diseases.
Brown adipocytes attack fat stores The activation of fat-burning cells makes people lose weight. When it is cold, brown adipocytes extract their fuel from storage fat, as thermogenesis requires a lot of calories. People who train their brown fat through regular cold exposure are thinner and less prone to developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases." Brown fat cells are particularly rich in mitochondria, the power plants where cellular respiration takes place. However, science does not yet sufficiently understand how brown fat cells boost metabolism such that new therapies could be developed.
Cold stimulates thermogenesis The molecular trick of brown fat cells is uncoupling protein-1, which facilitates that heat is generated instead of ATP, the conventional product of cellular respiration. "The high metabolic activity of brown fat cells must also influence the production of ATP," says Bartelt, "and we hypothesized that this process would be regulated by cold.
"Ideally, we'll find new ways, based on our data, to also restore the fitness of mitochondria in white fat cells, as most people have plenty if not too many of them," concludes Bartelt.Journal reference:Brunetta, H. S., et al. IF1 is a cold-regulated switch of ATP synthase hydrolytic activity to support thermogenesis in brown fat. The EMBO Journal. doi.org/10.1038/s44318-024-00215-0.
Heat Adipocytes Cold Metabolic Disorders Mitochondria Nutrients
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