Fig. 4: APRIL modifies white adipose lipolysis and brown adipose adaptive thermogenesis.

a Weight gain of WT or BAFF^−/− mice fed HFD for 20 weeks. b Systemic APRIL concentration in WT or BAFF^−/− mice quantified by ELISA. c–d White adipocytes stimulated in the presence or absence of rBAFF (500 ng/ml), rAPRIL (500 ng/ml), or saline and subjected to RNA-seq analysis. c Venn diagram analysis of genes modified by BAFF and APRIL. d Ontology pathways and heat map of associated overlapped genes. e qPCR quantified mRNA expression of indicated lipolysis genes in white adipocytes treated with saline (NS) or rAPRIL (500 ng/ml) for 24 hours. f Lean WT mice treated with rAPRIL (2 μg/mouse) every other day for 2 weeks. eWAT mRNA expression of indicated lipolysis genes quantified by qPCR, relative expression to saline-treated controls. g Primary white adipocytes from WT mice were treated with saline (NS), norepinephrine (NE; 1 µM) or rAPRIL (a; 500 ng/ml) for 12 hours. Protein expression of hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), phosphorlayted HSL (p-HSL), and α-tubulin loading control by western blot. h Free glycerol in supernatants, quantified by colorimetric assay, of WT, BAFF-R^−/−, TACI^−/−, or BCMA^−/− adipocytes treated with saline (NS) or rAPRIL (500 ng/ml). % increase relative to WT NS. i–j WT brown adipocytes treated with saline (NS) or rAPRIL (500 ng/ml) for 6 hours. i Ucp1 mRNA expression quantified by qPCR, relative expression to NS. j Oxygen consumption rate. a–b Representative of three independent experiments, n = 4–6/condition. c–d A single experiment, n = 2/condition. e–f Representative of three independent experiments, n = 3–4/condition. g Representative samples from a single experiment, n = 3/condition. h Representative of two independent experiments, n = 3/condition. i Representative of three independent experiments, n = 3–4/condition. j A single experiment, n = 4–5/condition. a–b, e–f, h–j For bar and line graphs, data represents mean±SEM. a–b, e–i Unpaired two-tailed Student’s t test. *p < 0.05. Source data are provided as a Source data file.