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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Nov 28.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Commun. 2014 May 28;5:3962. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4962

Figure 1. MitoN-Tg mice exhibit increased body-weight gain specifically at week-15 of HFD feeding due to a downregulation in the browning signature program.

Figure 1

Body-weight gain in FVB wild-type (WT) mice and mitoNEET transgenic (MitoN-Tg) mice during (a) chow-diet feeding or (b) high-fat diet (HFD) feeding. In Fig. 1b, arrow a and arrow b correspond to the 12-week and 15-weeks stages of HFD feeding that microarray analysis was performed for, respectively. (c) Real-time qPCR confirmatory data of key brown adipose tissue (BAT)-marker genes, reflective of a browning signature program, identified from Illumina microarray profiling (Otop1, Cidea, Cox7a1 and Prdm16) in sWAT derived from WT and MitoN-Tg mice fed HFD for either 12-weeks or 15-weeks. Data represents fold-change in gene expression when compared with WT sWAT under chow-fed conditions (n = 5 per group). (d) Pgc1α and Ucp1 gene expression levels in WT sWAT and MitoN-Tg sWAT derived from mice that were fed a chow-diet, or HFD for 2-weeks, 12-weeks, 15-weeks or >24-weeks. Data represents fold-change in gene expression when compared with WT sWAT under chow-fed conditions (n = 5 per group). (e) Western blot of complex I (subunit NDUFB8), complex II, complex III (core 2), complex IV (subunit I) and ATP synthase α of the mitochondrial electron transport chain in WT and MitoN-Tg sWAT, gWAT, BAT and liver tissues (top panel). The lower panel shows β-actin expression levels. (f) Immunoblots showing Ucp1 protein expression (upper panel) and β-actin expression levels (lower panel), in addition to (g) Ucp1 immunohistochemistry (IHC) on WT sWAT and MitoN-Tg sWAT from mice that were fed a chow-diet, or HFD for 12-weeks or 15-weeks (n = 5 per group). All IHC images were obtained at 40X-magnification. Scale bar, 25 μm. Student’s t-test, *P<0.05; **P<0.01.