Hot Takes: Molecular Pathobiologist Farnaz Shamsi Explains How Brown Fat Works
Have you heard of brown fat? Most of the fat in our bodies is white fat, which stores excess energy and, when there’s too much of it, can lead to obesity. But humans and other mammals also have a smaller amount of brown fat, a specialized tissue that regulates body temperature and is closely linked to weight loss and metabolic health.
“By rapidly taking up and using fuel sources from our bodies and the food that we eat, brown fat acts like a metabolic sink that draws in nutrients and prevents them from being stored,” says NYU College of Dentistry's Farnaz Shamsi, the senior author on a new Nature Communications study that determined how a key protein (called SLIT3) activates brown fat by expanding blood vessels and nerves in this heat-generating tissue.
The new understanding of what’s happening inside brown fat highlights several processes that could potentially be harnessed for their therapeutic potential. While most weight loss drugs—including GLP-1s—suppress appetite, decreasing the amount of food people eat and therefore the amount of energy stored, treatments that involve brown fat have the potential to increase energy expenditure.
NYU News talked to Shamsi all about it over tea.
Learn more about the study.
