Jan Nedergaard

Key takeaways

Jan Nedergaard belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jan Nedergaard to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jan Nedergaard from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jan Nedergaard is a physiologist, academic, and researcher. He is Professor of Physiology at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University. Nedergaard's research revolves around elucidating the function and physiological importance of brown adipose tissue, as well as the importance of thermoneutrality in translating mouse data to human conditions. He has authored/co-authored 204 primary articles and 134 reviews and book chapters, with 15 original articles as first author and 117 as corresponding senior author, and was one of 9 scientists at Stockholm University and one of 25 scientists in Sweden who were named on the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list. His primary publications have appeared in journals such as Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Cell Metabolism, Nature Metabolism, The EMBO Journal, American Journal of Physiology, BBA Bioenergetics and Biochimie. Nedergaard is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is a recipient of the Science Award for Obesity Research, The Friedrich Wassermann Award, and Prize for Scientific Review Writing.

Education Nedergaard pursued studies in chemistry and biology at Göteborg University from 1971 to 1973, graduating in Stockholm with a BSc degree in 1974. Following this, he started his PhD in 1975 at the Wenner-Gren Institute, under the mentorship of Olov Lindberg. He completed his doctoral education with a thesis titled "Control of Fatty Acid Utilization in Brown Adipose Tissue" in 1980, subsequently earning a D.Sc. degree in 1982 from Stockholm University.

Career Nedergaard assumed the role of associate professor at The Wenner-Gren Institute in 1984, becoming a full professor 1994, and he served as a Member of the Evaluation Committee for Biological Sciences at the Swedish Natural Science Research Council from 1989 to 1995. He served as the Dean of the Subfaculty of Biology in 2003. He was Secretary for the National Committee for Physiology from 2006 to 2016 and has been professor emeritus at Stockholm University since 2019.

Research Nedergaard has focused his research on brown adipose tissue and its role in metabolism, contributing to concepts such as understanding brown adipocyte precursors, the effects of brown adipose tissue on obesity, and its activity in adult humans. He has also advocated using thermoneutrality to apply mouse data to human conditions, highlighting similarities between human and mouse brown adipose tissue.

Brown adipose tissue Nedergaard's investigations into brown adipose tissue have shed light on signaling pathways and functional roles, highlighting the physiological importance of this tissue. In the 1980s and 1990s, he established distinct signaling pathways and functional roles for adrenergic stimulation of brown adipose tissue and showed that alpha1-adrenergic pathways were mainly ionic, while beta-adrenergic pathways were associated with the activation of uncoupling protein-1 (UCP1), which proved to be specifically present in brown adipose tissue. He studied the regulation of UCP1 activation and co-authored the work "Brown Adipose Tissue: Function and Physiological Significance" in 2004. In his 2007 paper, Nedergaard pointed out that brown adipose tissue is present and active in adult humans. He has also contributed to the establishment of basic concepts in brown adipose tissue research, including the developmental differences between brown and white adipocyte precursors, where the brown adipocytes precursors initially display myogenic gene expression markers. Additionally, his work highlighted how the absence of brown adipose tissue may contribute to obesity, and that UCP1-expressing cells that can develop in white adipose depots represent a distinct type of adipocyte, termed "brite" (now "beige") adipocytes, due to their unique gene expression profile compared to classical brown adipocytes.

Mammalian thermogenesis and metabolism Nedergaard's research on mice and human metabolism has emphasized the significance of thermoneutral temperatures in metabolic physiology. He has discussed the critical influence of ambient temperature on metabolic experiments, particularly regarding nonshivering thermogenesis and its implications for understanding mammalian metabolism, highlighting the importance of examining animals at thermoneutral temperatures. His research investigated the impact of housing temperatures on mouse metabolism, demonstrating that mice under thermoneutral conditions exhibited energy expenditure profiles similar to those of humans. Further expanding on this, he compared human brown adipose tissue (BAT) with classical brown and brite/beige adipose tissues, demonstrating that human BAT shared characteristics with classical mouse BAT, affirming their comparable nature.

Awards and honors 2011 – Science Award for Obesity Research, Nutrition et Santé 2016 – Prize for Scientific Review Writing, American Physiology Society 2017 – The Friedrich Wassermann Award, European Association

Personal life Nedergaard has been living in Sweden since 1971. He is married to Barbara Cannon and they have two sons.

Selected articles Cannon, B., & Nedergaard, J. A. N. (2004). Brown adipose tissue: function and physiological significance. Physiological reviews, 84(1), 277–359. Nedergaard, J., Bengtsson, T., & Cannon, B. (2007). Unexpected evidence for active brown adipose tissue in adult humans. American Journal of Physiology. Endocrinology and Metabolism, 293(2), E444-E452. Feldmann, H. M., Golozoubova, V., Cannon, B., & Nedergaard, J. (2009). UCP1 ablation induces obesity and abolishes diet-induced thermogenesis in mice exempt from thermal stress by living at thermoneutrality. Cell metabolism, 9(2), 203–209. Zingaretti, M. C., Crosta, F., Vitali, A., Guerrieri, M., Frontini, A., Cannon, B., ... & Cinti, S. (2009). The presence of UCP1 demonstrates that metabolically active adipose tissue in the neck of adult humans truly represents brown adipose tissue. The FASEB Journal, 23(9), 3113–3120. Petrovic, N., Walden, T. B., Shabalina, I. G., Timmons, J. A., Cannon, B., & Nedergaard, J. (2010). Chronic peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) activation of epididymally derived white adipocyte cultures reveals a population of thermogenically competent, UCP1-containing adipocytes molecularly distinct from classic brown adipocytes. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 285(10), 7153–7164.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jan Nedergaard

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jan Nedergaard claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jan Nedergaard before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jan Nedergaard ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jan Nedergaard

In research: Jan Nedergaard appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jan Nedergaard in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jan Nedergaard is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 births, Academic staff of Stockholm University, Danish academics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jan Nedergaard outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Jan Nedergaard in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jan Nedergaard means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jan Nedergaard out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jan Nedergaard in simple terms?

Jan Nedergaard is a physiologist, academic, and researcher. He is Professor of Physiology at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, The Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University.

Why does Jan Nedergaard matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jan Nedergaard?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jan Nedergaard.