Publication Date:
2015-07-15
Description:
The carnivoran giant panda has a specialized bamboo diet, to which its alimentary tract is poorly adapted. Measurements of daily energy expenditure across five captive and three wild pandas averaged 5.2 megajoules (MJ)/day, only 37.7% of the predicted value (13.8 MJ/day). For the wild pandas, the mean was 6.2 MJ/day, or 45% of the mammalian expectation. Pandas achieve this exceptionally low expenditure in part by reduced sizes of several vital organs and low physical activity. In addition, circulating levels of thyroid hormones thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) averaged 46.9 and 64%, respectively, of the levels expected for a eutherian mammal of comparable size. A giant panda-unique mutation in the DUOX2 gene, critical for thyroid hormone synthesis, might explain these low thyroid hormone levels. A combination of morphological, behavioral, physiological, and genetic adaptations, leading to low energy expenditure, likely enables giant pandas to survive on a bamboo diet.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Nie, Yonggang -- Speakman, John R -- Wu, Qi -- Zhang, Chenglin -- Hu, Yibo -- Xia, Maohua -- Yan, Li -- Hambly, Catherine -- Wang, Lu -- Wei, Wei -- Zhang, Jinguo -- Wei, Fuwen -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Jul 10;349(6244):171-4. doi: 10.1126/science.aab2413.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. ; State Key Laboratory of Molecular Developmental Biology, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. ; Beijing Key Laboratory of Captive Wildlife Technologies, Beijing Zoo, Beijing, China. ; Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. ; State Key Laboratory of Molecular Developmental Biology, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. ; Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. weifw@ioz.ac.cn.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26160943" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Base Sequence
;
Body Temperature
;
Cattle
;
Chromosomes, Human, Pair 15/genetics
;
Diet/veterinary
;
Dogs
;
*Eating
;
Energy Metabolism/genetics/*physiology
;
Gastrointestinal Tract
;
Genetic Variation
;
Humans
;
Mice
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Motor Activity
;
NADPH Oxidase/*genetics
;
Organ Size
;
Sasa
;
Thyroxine/blood
;
Triiodothyronine/blood
;
Ursidae/anatomy & histology/*genetics/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
