ON THE COVER: The skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus renifolius) is a well-known thermogenic plant which grows in the northern part of Japan. The spadix, which is the thermogenic organ of skunk cabbage, can produce enough heat to keep its internal temperature at around 20°C, even if the air temperature falls below freezing. Although uncoupling proteins (UCPs) has been proposed to be involved in mammalian thermogenesis, the structure and function of UCPs in thermogenic plants remain to be characterized. In this issue, Ito-Inaba et al. (pp 1911–1916) examined two cloned UCP genes, designated as SrUCPA and SrUCPB, and demonstrated that the major expressed UCP in spadix mitochondria was SrUCPA. The cover photograph shows skunk cabbage grown outdoors and the mass spectrum of a peptide specific to SrUCPA.
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