Evidence for a sensitive period of plasticity in brown adipose tissue during early childhood among indigenous Siberians.

Autor: Levy SB; Department of Anthropology, CUNY Hunter College, New York, New York, USA.; New York Consortium in Evolution Primatology, New York, New York, USA., Klimova TM; North-Eastern Federal University Named M. K. Ammosov, Yakutsk, Russia.; Yakutsk Scientific Center for Complex Medical Problems, Yakutsk, Russia., Zakharova RN; North-Eastern Federal University Named M. K. Ammosov, Yakutsk, Russia., Fedorov AI; North-Eastern Federal University Named M. K. Ammosov, Yakutsk, Russia., Fedorova VI; Aurora Medical Clinic, Yakutsk, Russia., Baltakhinova ME; Insurance Medical Company 'Sakhammedstrakh', Yakutsk, llinois, Russia., Leonard WR; Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: American journal of physical anthropology [Am J Phys Anthropol] 2021 Aug; Vol. 175 (4), pp. 834-846. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Apr 28.
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24297
Abstrakt: Objectives: Evolutionary theorists have debated the adaptive significance of developmental plasticity in organisms with long lifespans such as humans. This debate in part stems from uncertainty regarding the timing of sensitive periods. Does sensitivity to environmental signals fluctuate across development or does it steadily decline? We investigated developmental plasticity in brown adipose tissue (BAT) among indigenous Siberians in order to explore the timing of phenotypic sensitivity to cold stress.
Methods: BAT thermogenesis was quantified using infrared thermal imaging in 78 adults (25 men; 33 women). Cold exposure during gestation, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence was quantified using: (1) the average ambient temperature across each period; (2) the number of times daily temperature dropped below -40°F during each period. We also assessed past cold exposure with a retrospective survey of participation in outdoor activities.
Results: Adult BAT thermogenesis was significantly associated with the average temperature (p = 0.021), the number of times it was below -40°F (p = 0.026), and participation in winter outdoor activities (p = 0.037) during early childhood.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that early childhood represents an important stage for developmental plasticity, and that culture may play a critical role in shaping the timing of environmental signals. The findings highlight a new pathway through which the local consequences of global climate change may influence human biology, and they suggest that ambient temperature may represent an understudied component of the developmental origins of health and disease.
(© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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