The research was developed during Pereira Júnior’s master’s program at the Energy Metabolism Laboratory of IQ, under the supervision of professor Alicia Kowaltowski. It also included an internship at Yu-Hua Tseng’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School in the United States. Currently, the researcher is a doctoral student at the Helmholtz Diabetes Center (HDC) in Munich, Germany.
According to Alicia Kowaltowski, the study’s results point to two complementary pieces of evidence regarding the importance of MitoKATP channel closure in thermogenesis activation. “In addition to observing that cells with the channel closed generate more heat, we also saw that in animals under conditions that stimulate heat production, the channels were more closed,” says the supervisor.
Although the group is not currently pursuing immediate clinical applications, elucidating the cellular mechanisms of thermogenesis may represent an initial step toward future interventions. “I believe that understanding the biology – the mechanisms that generate greater or lesser amounts of heat – will enable us to better identify differences and, eventually, manipulate these processes when necessary,” the researcher stated.
Find out more at the Redoxoma CEPID website.
*Maria Celia Wider, from Cepid Redoxoma. Adapted for Jornal da USP
English version: Nexus Traduções, edited by Denis Pacheco
