Chemogenetic activation of iBAT-projecting sympathetic neurons

To investigate the activation of sympathetic nerves projecting to brown fat, we injected a neuron-specific, retrograde, AAV in the interscapular brown adipose tissue (iBAT) of Th-Cre mice expressing the excitatory designed receptor exclusively activated by a designer drug (DREADD) hM3Dq under Cre control. Over three weeks later, we anesthetized these mice, stimulated them with DCZ or Saline, and collected their iBAT 30 minutes later to profile their gene expression. In parallel, we performed a similar study on separate set of wild type (WT) mice without virus injection.