. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Mar 1.

Published in final edited form as: Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2018 Jan 20;29(3):191–200. doi: 10.1016/j.tem.2018.01.001

Table 1.

Biochemical and functional characteristics of thermogenic fat.


Location	• Dedicated depots (infants) • Relatively homogeneous	• Adults (mice and humans) • Highly heterogeneous
Lineage	• Myogenic lineage (Eng, Pax7, Myf5)	• Multiple lineages (SMA, PDGFRα, or PDGFRβ)
Enriched markers	Ucp1, Cidea, Pgc1a, Cox7a Prdm16, Zic1	Ucp1, Cidea, Pgc1a, Cox7a, Prdm16, Cited1, Cd137, Tmem26, Tbx1
Maintenance	• Constitutive	• Transient (direct transition)
Thermogenic mechanisms	• UCP1-dependent • Creatin cycling	UCP1-independent (Ca²⁺ cycling, creatin cycling)