Brown adipose tissue transplantation improves whole-body energy metabolism
Dear editor,
In addition to the energy-storing white adipose tissue (WAT),mammals possess brown adipose tissue (BAT)that burns fat to release heat for thermogenesis.BAT is abundant in mammals with high thermoregulatory demands,such as small mammals and the neonates of large mammals [1].BAT was previously believed to be present only in small mammals and human infants.However,active BAT was also demonstrated in adult humans in the early 1990s [2-3].Interestingly,in adult humans,BAT activity shows an inverse correlation with body mass index (BMI) and the percentage of body fat [4-5].These findings indicate that BAT may play an important role in whole-body energy metabolism,although direct evidence is still lacking.In the current study,we found that BAT transplantation improved whole-body energy metabolism and increased insulin sensitivity.In addition,BAT transplantation not only prevented high-fat diet (HFD)-induced weight gain but also reversed preexisting obesity.Furthermore,we showed that these effects were BAT-transplantation specific,as transplantation of other tissues did not produce similar effects.
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grants from the One Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China2012CBA01301 and 2012CB944701;a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China 31171131 to Wanzhu Jin
2013-07-29（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）
共4页
851-854
