title: Non-signalling energy use in the developing rat brain.
abstract: Energy use in the brain constrains its information processing power, but only about half the brain's energy consumption is directly related to information processing. Evidence for which non-signalling processes consume the rest of the brain's energy has been scarce. For the first time, we investigated the energy use of the brain's main non-signalling tasks with a single method. After blocking each non-signalling process, we measured oxygen level changes in juvenile rat brain slices with an oxygen-sensing microelectrode and calculated changes in oxygen consumption throughout the slice using a modified diffusion equation. We found that the turnover of the actin and microtubule cytoskeleton, followed by lipid synthesis, are significant energy drains, contributing 25%, 22% and 18%, respectively, to the rate of oxygen consumption. In contrast, protein synthesis is energetically inexpensive. We assess how these estimates of energy expenditure relate to brain energy use in vivo, and how they might differ in the mature brain.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: Elisabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Engl
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology, University College London, London, UK.|2 CERN, and Département de physique nucléaire et corpusculaire (DPNC), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Renaud
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jolivet
authors.affiliation: 3 School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK.
authors.forename: Catherine N
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Attwell
mesh_terms: D000199:Actins / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism*; D003599:Cytoskeleton / Q000378:metabolism; D004734:Energy Metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D008055:Lipids / Q000096:biosynthesis; D008839:Microelectrodes; D008870:Microtubules / Q000378:metabolism; D010100:Oxygen / Q000378:metabolism*; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis; D051381:Rats
chemical_list: D000199:Actins; D008055:Lipids; D010100:Oxygen
keywords: ATP; brain development; brain slice; energy metabolism; lipids