Brown Adipose Tissue

brown adipose tissue, also called brown fat, specialized type of connective tissue found in most mammals that generates heat.

Newborns and animals that hibernate have an elevated risk for hypothermia. Newborns, for example, have a larger surface area-to-volume ratio than adults and cannot warm themselves on their own by seeking a warmer environment, covering themselves, or generating significant heat through muscle contraction or shivering. Moreover, they have less thermal insulation in the form of white adipose tissue to protect them from the cold. To compensate for these deficits, newborns have stores of brown adipose tissue in their necks and backs. Brown adipose tissue does not offer the thermal insulation of white adipose, but it allows the newborn to generate heat through a process called nonshivering thermogenesis.

When a newborn is exposed to cold, thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and epinephrine are released in the body. These hormones initiate biochemical pathways that activate nonshivering thermogenesis in the mitochondria of brown adipose cells by triggering the production of substances that cause a protein known as thermogenin (also called uncoupling protein 1, UCP1) to become active. Thermogenin effectively uncouples electron transport in the mitochondrion from the production of chemical energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The resulting change in the balance of electrons and protons across the mitochondrial membrane causes energy to be lost as heat.

Brown adipose cells are better able to undergo nonshivering thermogenesis than white adipose cells because they have a greater number of mitochondria and because they have a greater amount of thermogenin. Brown adipose tissue is active at birth and then transforms to white adipose during normal human development. Maternal and fetal malnutrition may decrease the amount of brown adipose available in infancy. The precursors of brown adipose cells appear to be retained in human adults and thus have the potential to develop into brown adipose tissue.

In animals that hibernate, nonshivering thermogenesis is stimulated by factors such as shortened photoperiod (reduced exposure to light) and cold.