Physiology Commons^™

Characterizing Active And Inactive Brown Adipose Tissue In Adult Humans Using Pet-Ct And Mr Imaging, Aliya Gifford, Theodore F. Towse, Ronald C. Walker, Malcolm J. Avison, E Brian Welch

Peer Reviewed Articles

Activated brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays an important role in thermogenesis and whole body metabolism in mammals. Positron emission tomography (PET)-computed tomography (CT) imaging has identified depots of BAT in adult humans, igniting scientific interest. The purpose of this study is to characterize both active and inactive supraclavicular BAT in adults and compare the values to those of subcutaneous white adipose tissue (WAT). We obtained [¹⁸F]fluorodeoxyglucose ([¹⁸F]FDG) PET-CT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 25 healthy adults. Unlike [¹⁸F]FDG PET, which can detect only active BAT, MRI is capable of detecting both active …

Estrogen Receptor–Α In Medial Amygdala Neurons Regulates Body Weight, Pingwen Xu, Xuehong Cao, Yanlin He, Liangru Zhu, Yongjie Yang, Kenji Saito, Chunmei Wang, Xiaofeng Yan, Antentor Othrell Hinton Jr., Fang Zou, Hongfang Ding, Yan Xia, Chunling Yan, Gang Shu, San-Pin Wu, Bin Yang, Benjamin Feng, Deborah J. Clegg, Richard Demarchi, Sohaib A. Khan, Sophia Y. Tsai, Francesco J. Demayo, Qi Wu, Qingchun Tong, Yong Xu

Peer Reviewed Articles

Estrogen receptor–α (ERα) activity in the brain prevents obesity in both males and females. However, the ERα-expressing neural populations that regulate body weight remain to be fully elucidated. Here we showed that single-minded–1 (SIM1) neurons in the medial amygdala (MeA) express abundant levels of ERα. Specific deletion of the gene encoding ERα (Esr1) from SIM1 neurons, which are mostly within the MeA, caused hypoactivity and obesity in both male and female mice fed with regular chow, increased susceptibility to diet-induced obesity (DIO) in males but not in females, and blunted the body weight–lowering effects of a glucagon-like peptide-1–estrogen …

Immunolocalization Of G Protein-Coupled Estrogen Receptor In The Rat Epididymis, Griselle B. Martinez-Traverso, Christopher Pearl

Peer Reviewed Articles

Background

Estrogen plays an important role in male reproduction, and males lacking estrogen signaling in the reproductive tissues are infertile. Estrogen signaling is mediated via two nuclear receptors, ERα and ERβ, but it was recently found that a G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) is present in the testis. It is believed that GPER is a membrane form of the estrogen receptor and mediates non-classical estrogen signaling. However, the cellular localization of GPER in the epididymis is unknown. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the cellular and regional expression of GPER in the rat epididymis.

Findings

To localize …

A Carboxyl-Terminal Sequence In The Lutropin Β Subunit Contributes To The Sorting Of Lutropin To The Regulated Pathway, Albina Jablonka-Shariff, Christopher A. Pearl, Anna Comstock, Irving Boime

Peer Reviewed Articles

Although synthesized in the same pituitary gonadotropes, the secretion profiles of lutropin (LH) and follitropin (FSH) differ. LH is secreted through a regulated pathway and associated with a bolus release at mid-estrous cycle. In contrast, the majority of FSH is secreted constitutively with an incremental increase until ovulation. Both share an identicalα subunit, and thus theβ subunit contains determinants for sorting into the regulated pathway. Previously, we demonstrated that a hydrophobic carboxyl-terminal heptapeptide of the LHβ subunit (Leu-Ser-Gly-Leu-Leu-Phe-Leu), not found in the FSHβ subunit, influences the intracellular behavior of the LH dimer. To test the hypothesis that the peptide contributes …