Terrestrial Birth and Body Size Tune UCP1 Functionality in Seals

The molecular evolution of the mammalian heater protein UCP1 is a powerful biomarker to understand thermoregulatory strategies during species radiation into extreme climates, such as aquatic life with high thermal conductivity. While fully aquatic mammals lost UCP1, most semiaquatic seals display in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Molecular Biology and Evolution
Main Authors: Gaudry, Michael J, Khudyakov, Jane, Pirard, Laura, Debier, Cathy, Crocker, Daniel, Crichton, Paul G, Jastroch, Martin, Wilson, Melissa
Other Authors: UCL - SSH/IACS - Institute of Analysis of Change in Contemporary and Historical Societies
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Oxford University Press (OUP) 2024
Subjects:
brown adipose tissue
nonshivering thermogenesis
pinniped
pseudogene
UCP1
Elephant Seal
Elephant Seals
harbor seal
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/291240
https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae075
Description
Summary:The molecular evolution of the mammalian heater protein UCP1 is a powerful biomarker to understand thermoregulatory strategies during species radiation into extreme climates, such as aquatic life with high thermal conductivity. While fully aquatic mammals lost UCP1, most semiaquatic seals display intact UCP1 genes, apart from large elephant seals. Here, we show that UCP1 thermogenic activity of the small-bodied harbor seal is equally potent compared to terrestrial orthologs, emphasizing its importance for neonatal survival on land. In contrast, elephant seal UCP1 does not display thermogenic activity, not even when translating a repaired or a recently highlighted truncated version. Thus, the thermogenic benefits for neonatal survival during terrestrial birth in semiaquatic pinnipeds maintained evolutionary selection pressure on UCP1 function and were only outweighed by extreme body sizes among elephant seals, fully eliminating UCP1-dependent thermogenesis. © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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