Abstract
In the second half of the 20th century, one of the central themes of developmental physiology was the problem of "high resistance of newborn mammals to oxygen insufficiency." Several leading laboratories at the time studied the question. The article presents the main experimental results of the author's research group, which could also inspire the current research.
An extensive series of experiments on rat pups has indicated the existence of a very effective mechanism that allows newborn mammals to withstand a lack of oxygen. The basis of survival in a hypoxic environment (in a state of oxygen emergency) is the ability of immature tissue (undifferentiated and not yet adjusted to homeostatic conditions in the current absence of regulatory mechanisms), to reduce the body's dependence on oxidative processes.
In the immature organism, consumption depends on environmental conditions, where the supply of oxygen determines the degree of its utilization. One of the mechanisms of resistance of the newborn brain to hypoxia could be the increased efficiency of phosphorylation, i.e. the association of oxidative processes with the processes of ATP production, which was observed both at the level of brain tissue homogenate and at the level of mitochondria.
Oxygen deficiency in experimental conditions in rats, but also in parallel observations in human neonates, led to an increase in the proportion of PUFA omega-3. This could be interpreted as a lipogenetic process carried out by elongation and accompanied by desaturation processes in a number of PUFA omega-3 fatty acids.