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An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics

Since the discovery of functional brown adipose tissue (BAT) in adult humans, research on BAT gained a new popularity to combat obesity and related comorbidities. To date, however, methods to quantify BAT thermogenesis are often either highly invasive, require advanced equipment, are time consuming...

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Autores principales: Oelkrug, Rebecca, Mittag, Jens
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7910537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33637831
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84200-1
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author Oelkrug, Rebecca
Mittag, Jens
author_facet Oelkrug, Rebecca
Mittag, Jens
author_sort Oelkrug, Rebecca
collection PubMed
description Since the discovery of functional brown adipose tissue (BAT) in adult humans, research on BAT gained a new popularity to combat obesity and related comorbidities. To date, however, methods to quantify BAT thermogenesis are often either highly invasive, require advanced equipment, are time consuming or of limited sensitivity. Here we present a simple yet highly effective and minimally invasive protocol for the Precise Unravelment of Non-shivering brown fat thermoKinetics (PUNK) in mice using infrared thermography in combination with Vaseline to brush up the fur between the shoulder blades. We also use physiological and molecular readouts including indirect calorimetry, qPCR and Western Blots to test our protocol. Our study demonstrates that Vaseline before thermography vastly advances the reproducibility and quality of BAT infrared pictures or videos, as it exposes the skin above the BAT for a direct line of sight for the infrared camera and thereby circumvents the well-known problems associated with shaving and anaesthesia. We subsequently validate that this approach does not affect physiological and molecular BAT function, but instead leads to more robust and less variable results when comparing for instance norepinephrine stimulation tests or knockout animals. Taken together, the PUNK protocol for BAT thermography quickly and effectively improves scientific outcomes of this method, and can be easily added to existing paradigms. Consequently, it safes money, time and experimental animals, thereby putting the 3R’s principles of animal welfare into practice.
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spelling pubmed-79105372021-03-02 An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics Oelkrug, Rebecca Mittag, Jens Sci Rep Article Since the discovery of functional brown adipose tissue (BAT) in adult humans, research on BAT gained a new popularity to combat obesity and related comorbidities. To date, however, methods to quantify BAT thermogenesis are often either highly invasive, require advanced equipment, are time consuming or of limited sensitivity. Here we present a simple yet highly effective and minimally invasive protocol for the Precise Unravelment of Non-shivering brown fat thermoKinetics (PUNK) in mice using infrared thermography in combination with Vaseline to brush up the fur between the shoulder blades. We also use physiological and molecular readouts including indirect calorimetry, qPCR and Western Blots to test our protocol. Our study demonstrates that Vaseline before thermography vastly advances the reproducibility and quality of BAT infrared pictures or videos, as it exposes the skin above the BAT for a direct line of sight for the infrared camera and thereby circumvents the well-known problems associated with shaving and anaesthesia. We subsequently validate that this approach does not affect physiological and molecular BAT function, but instead leads to more robust and less variable results when comparing for instance norepinephrine stimulation tests or knockout animals. Taken together, the PUNK protocol for BAT thermography quickly and effectively improves scientific outcomes of this method, and can be easily added to existing paradigms. Consequently, it safes money, time and experimental animals, thereby putting the 3R’s principles of animal welfare into practice. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7910537/ /pubmed/33637831 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84200-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Oelkrug, Rebecca
Mittag, Jens
An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
title An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
title_full An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
title_fullStr An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
title_full_unstemmed An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
title_short An improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
title_sort improved method for the precise unravelment of non-shivering brown fat thermokinetics
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7910537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33637831
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84200-1
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