生命科学联合中心 学术报告

题目：Innate mechanisms for thermoregulation

报告人：Ajay Chawla, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor of Physiology and Medicine

Cardiovascular Research Institute

University of California, San Francisco, USA

时间：2016-5-19（周四）， 13:00-14:00pm

地点：北京大学金光生命科学大楼101报告厅

联系人：邱义福  北大-清华生命科学联合中心

Abstract: In all endotherms (warm blooded animals), the maintenance of core body temperature is essential to ensure that cellular and physiological functions operate normally under conditions of environmental challenge. In mammals, two types of programs support thermal homeostasis in cold environments: acute adaptations and acclimatization. Although programs of acclimatization are well documented across species and are of great interest to evolutionary biologists, their mechanisms, with a few exceptions (such as changes in skin pigmentation in response to sunlight or increase in oxygen carrying capacity after living at high altitudes), are largely unknown.

Through our work, we have identified the mechanisms for prolonged adaptation and acclimatization to environmental cold. Unlike the acute adaptations that are initiated by the sympathetic nervous system, acclimatization to environmental cold is orchestrated by type 2 immune cells (ILC2s, eosinophils, and alternatively activated macrophages) and signals (IL-33, IL-4 and -13), which sequentially regulate the expansion, commitment, and differentiation of adipocyte precursors into beige adipocytes. Our identification of the immune system as the primary thermogenic circuit controlling the cold acclimatization process is consistent with a recent proposal that type 2 immunity coevolved as a defensive strategy against noxious environmental stimuli, of which cold might be one.

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