Supplementary Figure 4: Deleting melanocortin 4 receptor (Mc4r) in pre-ganglionic neurons of the parasypathetic nervous system (PNS) does not promote obesity, while loss in the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) impairs iBAT responses to diet.

(a) Body weight in mice with intact Mc4r signaling (Mc4r^flox/flox) and selective deletion in the PNS (Mc4r^flox/flox x Phox2B-cre) fed a high-fat/high-sucrose diet at 8 weeks-of-age (n = 8 and 7, respectively). (b) Energy expenditure (EE) and (c) food intake in chow-fed 7- to 8-week-old Mc4r^flox/flox and Mc4r^flox/flox x Phox2B-cre mice introduced to HFHS diet 3 d prior to metabolic cage assessment (n = 8 and 6, respectively). EE in panel b was not normalized for body weight differences since none exist. There were no statistical differences in panels a-c using two tailed unpaired Student's t-tests. iBAT gene expression in (d) Mc4r^flox/flox, Mc4r^flox/flox x Chat-cre, and Mc4r-null mice as well as (e) Mc4r^flox/flox and Mc4r^flox/flox x Phox2B-cre mice fed HFHS diet for 12 weeks (8-20 weeks-of-age). * and † indicate p<0.05 versus Mc4r^flox/flox or Mc4r^flox/flox x Chat-cre one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's post-hoc analyses or two tailed unpaired Student's t-tests. All mice were male and results are shown as means ± SEM.