Abstract
Summary: Basal brown adipose tissue (BAT) cell respiration increased significantly from 24 days gestation to 10 days postnatal age and demonstrated a significant positive correlation with cell size (r = 0.93, P < 0.01). After adjustment for variation due to cell size, basal respiration at 24 and 31 days fetal age were not significantly different (P> 0.05), whereas basal respiration at 10 days postnatal age was greater than that in either of the two fetal groups (P < 0.025). Ouabain did not have a consistent suppressive effect on basal respiration. Catecholamine-stimulated respiration increased significantly from 24 to 31 days gestation with no further increase at 10 days of postnatal age. Although there was a significant correlation between stimulated respiration and cell size (r = 0.92, P < 0.01), adjustment for cell size did not change this pattern of development.
Mean (±S.E.) ouabain suppression of catecholamine-stimulated respiration increased from 42.8 ± 4.4% at 24 days gestation to 61.9 ± 2.9% at 31 days (p < 0.001) and 69.9 ± 1.6% at 10 days postnatal age. Stimulated respiration independent of sodium-potassium transport (respiration in the presence of ouabain) varied from a mean of 24.0 ± 4.3 μl O2/106 cells ± h at 24 days of age to 312 ± 41 μl O2/106 cells ± h at 31 days (P < 0.001) and 250 ± 24 μl O2/106 cells ± h at 10 days postnatal age. Sodium-potassium transport dependent respiration (e.g., the difference between total stimulated respiration and respiration in the presence of ouabain) increased from 17.8 ± 3.6 μl O2/106 cells ± h at 24 days to 533 ± 104 μl O2/106 cells ± h at 31 days and 561 ± 51 μl O2/106 cells ± h at 10 days postnatal age. For both sodium-potassium dependent and independent respiration measurements, mean results in the 31 day fetal and 10 day postnatal animals were similar and significantly greater than the measurements for 24 day fetal animals (P < 0.01).
These results suggest that the increase in basal BAT respiration in the rabbit during fetal life is dependent on increasing BAT cell volume and not on changes in ouabain sensitive respiration. In contrast, the maturation of stimulated respiration is largely independent of changes in cell volume but is dependent on changes in both ouabain sensitive and insensitive respiration.
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Klein, A., Fisher, D. Effects of Changes in Cell Size and Ouabain Sensitive Respiration on Development of Brown Adipose Tissue Thermogenesis in the Rabbit. Pediatr Res 17, 220–223 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198303000-00011
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198303000-00011
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