Tag Archive for 'Brown fat'

Brown Fat May Protect against Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases

Jan 5, 2021 by News Staff

White fat stores excess energy, whereas brown and beige fat are thermogenic and dissipate energy as heat. But it is unclear whether individuals with ample...

White fat cells (adipocytes) activate the lipolysis pathway to produce the free fatty acids that are used as heating fuel by brown adipose tissue. Nayak et al show that OPN3 is required for blue-light-enhanced activation of the lipolysis pathway. This explains the low body temperature of OPN3 mutant mice. Image credit: Nayak et al, doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.12.043.

Fat Cells Can Sense Light, Animal Study Shows

Jan 28, 2020 by News Staff

Light exposure regulates how two kinds of fat cells (adipocytes) work together to produce the raw materials that all other cells use for energy, according...

Regular coffee consumers can sniff out even small amounts of coffee and are faster at recognizing the aroma. Image credit: StockSnap.

Coffee Directly Stimulates Your Body’s Brown Fat, New Study Finds

Jun 26, 2019 by News Staff

Drinking a cup of coffee can stimulate brown adipose tissue (also known as brown fat), an important part of the human body which plays a key role in how...

Adipose tissue. Image credit: Blausen.com Staff / Medical Gallery of Blausen Medical 2014 / WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2), doi: 10.15347/wjm/2014.010.

Study: Low Temperatures Activate ‘Good’ Fat Formation at Cellular Level

Mar 26, 2018 by News Staff

A new study from the University of Nottingham, UK, shows that the way in which fat is made within the body is not ‘pre-programmed’ during the early...

Gaudry et al demonstrate that members of various lineages (for example, cetaceans, horses, woolly mammoths, Steller’s sea cows) evolved extreme cold hardiness in the absence of UCP1-mediated thermogenesis. Image credit: Mauricio Anton.

Single Gene Linked to Evolutionary Rise of Multiple Mammalian Lineages

Jul 17, 2017 by News Staff

Ancient, independent inactivations of the ucp1 gene, which encodes the uncoupling protein 1, or UCP1 (essential for thermogenesis in brown fat), were a...