Endocrine Abstracts

Cell autonomous sex identity (CASI) of birds is the concept that sex-steroids have little or no effect on the development of secondary sexual characteristics in birds, and that sexual dimorphisms are determined by the sex-chromosome content of cells in individual tissues. In avian species males have a ZZ sex chromosome, while females are ZW. Sexual dimorphisms in chickens, such as muscle mass, comb and wattle size and hackles and spur development are believed to be determined ...

The recent discovery of brown adipose tissue (BAT) in adult humans, which generates heat to maintain body temperature in a cold environment, offers an exciting new strategy to treat obesity and metabolic disease, but our knowledge of human BAT activation is limited. To identify novel pathways regulating human BAT, we undertook RNA sequencing of human brown and white adipocytes. The gene SLC6A4 (encoding the serotonin transporter SERT) was one of the most highly differ...