Terrestrial Birth and Body Size Tune UCP1 Functionality in Seals

• 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

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.