AgRP neurons are not indispensable for body weight maintenance in adult mice
Jing Cai, Jing Chen, Joshua Ortiz‐Guzman, Jessica Huang, Benjamin R. Arenkiel, Yuchen Wang, Yan Zhang, Yuyan Shi, Qingchun Tong, Cheng Zhan
Abstract
In addition to their role in promoting feeding and obesity development, hypothalamic arcuate agouti-related protein/neuropeptide Y (AgRP/NPY) neurons are widely perceived to be indispensable for maintaining normal feeding and body weight in adults, and consistently, acute inhibition of AgRP neurons is known to reduce short-term food intake. Here, we adopted complementary methods to achieve nearly complete ablation of arcuate AgRP/NPY neurons in adult mice and report that lesioning arcuate AgRP/NPY neurons in adult mice causes no apparent alterations in ad libitum feeding or body weight. Consistent with previous studies, loss of AgRP/NPY neurons blunts fasting refeeding. Thus, our studies show that AgRP/NPY neurons are not required for maintaining ad libitum feeding or body weight homeostasis in adult mice.