Is there a role for sarcolipin in avian facultative thermogenesis in extreme cold?

ABSTRACT: Endotherms defend their body temperature in the cold by employing shivering (ST) and/or non-shivering thermogenesis (NST). Although NST is well documented in mammals, its importance to avian heat generation is unclear. Recent work points to a prominent role for the sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca²⁺ ATPase (SERCA) in muscular NST. SERCA's involvement in both ST and NST, however, posits a tradeoff between these two heat-generating mechanisms. To explore this tradeoff, we assayed pectoralis gene expression of adult songbirds exposed to chronic temperature acclimations. Counter to mammal models, we found that cold-acclimated birds downregulated the expression of sarcolipin (SLN), a gene coding for a peptide that promotes heat generation by uncoupling SERCA Ca²⁺ tran

SUBMITTER: Stager M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7336856 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature