Diurnal oscillations in murine brown adipose tissue analyzed by RNA-seq

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) burns fatty acids to produce heat, and shows diurnal oscillation with peak activity in glucose and triglyceride-derived fatty acid uptake at wakening. To gain further insight in the diurnal regulation of metabolic BAT activity, we performed RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) on interscapular (i)BAT samples collected from chow-fed male C57BL/6J mice (10 weeks old) exposed to mild cold (22°C) at 3-hour intervals throughout a 24-hour period (n=4 mice per time point). All mice were entrained to a 12h:12h light:dark cycle, and therefore time is denoted as Zeitgeber Time (ZT) in which ZT0 indicates the onset of the light (active) phase. We applied RNA-seq on total RNA isolated from murine iBAT obtained at 3 hour-intervals throughout a 24-hour period (8 time points in total; 4 replicates per time point).