Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
12-2020
Abstract
Elite human and animal athletes must acquire the fuels necessary for extreme feats, but also contend with the oxidative damage associated with peak metabolic performance. Here, we show that a migratory bird with fuel stores composed of more omega-6 polyunsaturated fats (PUFA) expended 11% less energy during long-duration (6 hr) flights with no change in oxidative costs; however, this short-term energy savings came at the long-term cost of higher oxidative damage in the omega-6 PUFA-fed birds. Given that fatty acids are primary fuels, key signaling molecules, the building blocks of cell membranes, and that oxidative damage has long-term consequences for health and ageing, the energy savings-oxidative cost trade-off demonstrated here may be fundamentally important for a wide diversity of organisms on earth.
DOI
10.7554/eLife.60626
PubMed ID
33306947
Recommended Citation
Langlois, L., Engel, S., Speakman, J. R., Fatica, O., DeMoranville, K., Goymann, W., Trost, L., Bryla, A., Dzialo, M., Sadowska, E., & Bauchinger, U. (2020 Dec 11). The energy savings-oxidative cost trade-off for migratory birds during endurance flight. eLife, 9, e60626. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60626
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Included in
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Molecular, Genetic, and Biochemical Nutrition Commons, Poultry or Avian Science Commons
Comments
Olivia Fatica is a Biology Lab Assistant at Sacred Heart University.
Published: 11 December 2020.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.