Cannon, Barbara, and Jan Nedergaard. Brown Adipose Tissue: Function and Physiological Significance. Physiol Rev 84: 277–359, 2004; 10.1152/physrev.00015.2003.—The function of brown adipose tissue i...

Brown Adipose Tissue: Function and Physiological Significance

Adipose tissue, best known for its role in fat storage, can also suppress weight gain and metabolic disease through the action of specialized, heat-producing adipocytes. Brown adipocytes are located in dedicated depots and express constitutively high levels of thermogenic genes, whereas inducible 'brown-like' adipocytes, also known as beige cells, develop in white fat in response to various activators. The activities of brown and beige fat cells reduce metabolic disease, including obesity, in mice and correlate with leanness in humans. Many genes and pathways that regulate brown and beige adipocyte biology have now been identified, providing a variety of promising therapeutic targets for metabolic disease.

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Brown and beige fat: development, function and therapeutic potential

Thermogenic mechanisms in brown fat.

Measurement of energy balance during voluntary overeating in rats unequivocally establishes the quantitative importance of diet-induced thermogenesis in energy balance. Like cold-induced thermogenesis, this form of heat production involves changes in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system and brown adipose tissue which suggest that this tissue may determine metabolic efficiency and resistance to obesity.

A role for brown adipose tissue in diet-induced thermogenesis

The rise in the incidence of obesity has led to a major interest in the biology of white adipose tissue. The tissue is a major endocrine and signaling organ, with adipocytes, the characteristic cel...

Hypoxia and Adipose Tissue Function and Dysfunction in Obesity

Cardiac output (CO) and the fractional distribution (FD) of γ-labeled plastic microspheres (15 ± 5 μm) injected into the left ventricle were used to calculate blood flow to organs and tissues of ba...

Nonshivering thermogenesis in the rat. II. Measurements of blood flow with microspheres point to brown adipose tissue as the dominant site of the calorigenesis induced by noradrenaline.

M L Frydman

Papers

Nonshivering thermogenesis in the rat. II. Measurements of blood flow with microspheres point to brown adipose tissue as the dominant site of the calorigenesis induced by noradrenaline.