AUTHOR=Copeland Donald L., Duff Robert J., Liu Qin , Prokop Jeremy , Londraville Richard L. TITLE=Leptin in Teleost Fishes: An Argument for Comparative Study JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physiology VOLUME=2 YEAR=2011 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2011.00026 DOI=10.3389/fphys.2011.00026 ISSN=1664-042X ABSTRACT=

All organisms face tradeoffs with regard to how limited energy resources should be invested. When is it most favorable to grow, to reproduce, how much lipid should be allocated to storage in preparation for a period of limited resources (e.g., winter), instead of being used for growth or maturation? These are a few of the high consequence fitness “decisions” that represent the balance between energy acquisition and allocation. Indeed, for animals to make favorable decisions about when to grow, eat, or reproduce, they must integrate signals among the systems responsible for energy acquisition, storage, and demand. We make the argument that leptin signaling is a likely candidate for an integrating system. Great progress has been made understanding the leptin system in mammals, however our understanding in fishes has been hampered by difficulty in cloning fish orthologs of mammalian proteins and (we assert), underutilization of the comparative approach.