Transcriptomics to discover splice variants involved in the browning of adipose tissue. Mus musculus

Adipose tissue is the major depot for energy storage. Recent studies have shown that at least three types of adipocytes can be distinguished depending on their anatomical locations : 1) The classic brown adipocytes, i.e., brown adipose tissue (BAT); 2) The 'brite' (brown-in-white) adipocytes, i.e. inguinal white adipose tissue (iWAT); 3) The 'true' white adipocytes, i.e., epididymal white adipose tissue (eWAT). Two strains of mice (SV129 and C57BL/6J) were used in this study. SV strain is resistant to obesity and latter is prone to obesity. Pre-adipocyte cells were isolated from subcutaneous tissue (iWAT) to create four groups of cell cultures per strain of mouse. Overall design: Cells were cultured for either 3 days or 7 days. At 3 days the cells are still proliferating and are not considered mature adipocytes, whereas adipocytes at day 7 are considered as mature. One of the 7 days cell cultures was treated with norepinephrine (NE) and another 7 days cell culture was treated with rosiglitazone (R) for the entire experiment. The remaining two cell cultures (3 and 7 days) were remained untreated. One untreated cell culture was harvested after 3 days of growth, whilst the rest were harvested after 7 days of growth.