Cellular physiology of cold- and heat-exposed squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciurea).

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Abstract
To compare chemical thermoregulation in primates to that of rodents, enzymatic and other assays previously done on cold- and heat-acclimated rodents were made on control and hot- and cold-acclimated monkeys (Saimiri sciurea). Body and organ weights and protein per gram tissue weight were obtained. Oxidative enzyme levels of heart, kidney, liver, skeletal muscle, brown fat, cerebrum, hypothalamus, and cerebellum homogenates and of liver and kidney mitochondria and microsomes were measured There was a high and low rate of oxidation of [alpha] -glycerophosphate by brown fat homogenates and liver mitochondria of cold- and heat-exposed monkeys, respectively, compared to control values. However, in general, very few of the many enzymatic systems assayed changed, which indicates that cellular chemical thermoregulatory metabolic response patterns of this primate are very different from those of rodents. Shifts in organ weights in cold- and heat-acclimated primates are generally similar to the changes observed in cold- and heat-acclimated rats.