New breakthrough in targeting fat cells with CRISPR-Cas9

Fat is vital to life, but too much fat can cause a series of health problems

"Adipocytes are different from other cells in that they lack unique cell surface receptors and account for only a small part of the cells in adipose tissue," said Dr.

In a new paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Romanelli, McDougall and their colleagues describe a breakthrough using CRISPR-Cas9

Romanelli said: "So far, the biggest challenge in fat research is that if you want to study the function of genes, you must invest a lot of time, resources and money to breed genetically modified mice

The traditional method of developing mouse models requires breeding mice with ideal mutations, deleting or introducing certain genes of interest, Romanelli said, which may take more than a year and tens of thousands of dollars

CRISPR-Cas9 has completely changed this process

Using this technology, the research team successfully targeted brown fat, which is a type of adipose tissue that is specifically used to generate heat and protect core body temperature

"All we can do is extract the entire process and breed a genetically modified mouse in two weeks to one month, reducing the cost to less than $2,000

They can also use this method to delete multiple genes at the same time, a fact that can help researchers better understand important molecular pathways

Using their adeno-associated virus CRISPR-Cas9 component, they were able to knock out the UCP1 gene that defines brown fat and makes it generate heat in adult mice

Romanelli said that these early results are exploratory, but this technology represents an important step in the study of fat

Article title

BAd-CRISPR: Inducible gene knockout in interscapular brown adipose tissue of adult mice