Journal
FRONTIERS IN ENDOCRINOLOGY
Volume 6, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fendo.2015.00180
Keywords
oxytocin; oxytocin receptor; rostral medullary raphe; body thermoregulation; energy homeostasis
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Funding
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan [14360046, 10164609, 23380055]
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [15H02442, 23380055, 26870044, 14360046] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Recent papers have reported that oxytocin (Oxt) and the oxytocin receptor (Oxtr) may be involved in the regulation of food intake in mammals. We therefore suspected the Oxt/Oxtr system to be involved in energy homeostasis. In previous studies, we found a tendency toward obesity in Oxtr-deficient (Oxtr(-/-))mice, as well as impaired thermoregulation when these mice were exposed to cold conditions. In the present study, we observed the expression of Oxtr in the rostral medullary raphe (RMR), the brain region known to control thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT). Through immunohistochemistry, we detected neurons expressing Oxtr and c-Fos in the RMR of mice exposed to cold conditions. Up to 40% of Oxtr-positive neurons in RMR were classified as glutamatergic neurons, as shown by immunostaining using anti-VGLUT3 antibody. In addition, mice with exclusive expression of Oxtr in the RMR were generated by injecting an MV-Oxtr vector into the RMR region of Oxtr(-/-) mice. We confirmed the recovery of thermoregulatory ability in the manipulated mice during exposure to cold conditions. Moreover, mice with RMR-specific expression of Oxtr lost the typical morphological change in BAT observed in Oxtr(-/-) mice. Additionally, increased expression of the p-adrenergic receptor gene, Adrb3, was observed in BAT. These results are the first to show the critical role of RMR Oxtr expression in thermoregulation during cold conditions.
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