There is a fair amount of literature on the benefits of brown adipose tissue, involved in thermogenesis, weight loss mechanisms, and most likely a variety of forms of beneficial metabolic signaling. Some interventions known to improve long-term health may act in part by converting a fraction of white adipose tissue to brown adipose tissue. Here, researchers use the blunt but useful approach of transplanting brown fat tissue between mice to observe the outcome, demonstrating that the addition of more brown fat appears beneficial to measures of health.
Brown adipose tissue (BAT), a major subtypes of adipose tissues, is known for thermogenesis and promoting healthful longevity. Our hypothesis is that BAT protects against impaired healthful longevity, i.e., obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and reduced exercise tolerance. While most prior studies have shown that exercise regulates BAT activation and improves BAT density, relatively few have shown that BAT increases exercise performance. In contrast, our recent studies with the regulator of G protein signaling 14 (RGS14) knockout (KO) model of extended longevity showed that it enhances exercise performance, mediated by its more potent BAT, compared with BAT from wild type mice.
Multiple mechanisms mediated the enhanced exercise capacity in RGS14 KO mice. The most important mechanism is BAT, which mediates SIRT3, MnSOD, MEK/ERK and VEGF pathways. These mechanisms regulate exercise capacity by improved mitochondrial function, protection against oxidative stress, and improved blood flow/angiogenesis. For example, when the BAT from RGS14 KO mice is transplanted to WT mice, their exercise capacity is enhanced at 3 days after BAT transplantation, whereas BAT transplantation from WT to WT mice increased exercise performance, but only at 8 weeks after transplantation. In view of the ability of BAT to mediate healthful longevity and enhance exercise performance, it is likely that a pharmaceutical analog of BAT will become a novel therapeutic modality.
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