Any vets or zoologists out there with some animal parallels??
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 11:42:14 -0500 From: “Paul L. Moses” (theseus@dgs.dgsys.com) Subject: UCP2: A discovery we already knew? If you’ve seen any of the recent stories on the new discovery of the “weight loss gene”, you’ve probably thought it is sort of old hat. At least I did. We already know that there is a protein called UCP in mitochondria. UCP, uncoupling protein, disrupts aerobic respiration when levels of fatty acids cross a certain threshold and after that point simply burns them in a heat producing reaction. This process is thermogenesis. It turns out that UCP was only known to exist in brown fat, also known as Brown Adipose Tissue or BAT. BAT comprises only a small percentage of an adult’s fat reserves, even a lean and conditioned adult, so there was some doubt as to the reality or extent of thermogenesis as an important process. (In the scientific community, anyway….those of us here are VERY familiar with the reality of thermogenesis! ) Now UCP2 has been discovered, and it
