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Thermogenesis is the process of heat production in organisms.It occurs in all warm-blooded animals, and also in a few species of thermogenic plants such as the Eastern skunk cabbage, the Voodoo lily (Sauromatum venosum), and the giant water lilies of the genus Victoria.
Non-shivering thermogenesis is a regulated process in which the proton gradient generated by electron transport in mitochondria is used to produce heat instead of ATP in brown adipose tissue. [3] Animals that hibernate include bats , ground squirrels and other rodents, mouse lemurs, the European hedgehog and other insectivores, monotremes and ...
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In shivering, the heat is the main intended product and is utilized for warmth. [citation needed] Newborn babies, infants, and young children experience a greater (net) heat loss than adults because of greater surface-area-to-volume ratio. As they cannot shiver to maintain body heat, [citation needed] they rely on non-shivering thermogenesis.
However, brown adipose tissue is highly specialized for this non-shivering thermogenesis. First, each cell has a higher number of mitochondria compared to more typical cells. Second, these mitochondria have a higher-than-normal concentration of thermogenin in the inner membrane.
Both processes consume energy, however high-intensity shivering uses glucose as a fuel source and low-intensity tends to use fats. This is a primary reason why animals store up food in the winter. [citation needed] Brown adipocytes are also capable of producing heat via a process called non-shivering thermogenesis. In this process ...
The UCP1, or thermogenin, gene likely arose in an ancestor of modern vertebrates, but did not initially allow for our vertebrate ancestor to use non-shivering thermogenesis for warmth. It wasn't until heat generation was adaptively selected for in placental mammal descendants of this common ancestor that UCP1 evolved its current function in ...
Because of the inexactness of the definition, chemists and other scientists use the term "chemical process" only in a general sense or in the engineering sense. However, in the "process (engineering)" sense, the term "chemical process" is used extensively. The rest of the article will cover the engineering type of chemical processes.