scRNA-seq of fasted or 1 hour refed mouse hypothalamus after 6 weeks of HFD
Immediate Early Genes such as Npas4 are induced as part of the rapid response to environmental stimuli to regulate future transcription. The hypothalamus is made up of distinct neuronal populations and nuclei that regulate homeostatic processes such as POMC neurons that regulate feeding. To date, specific roles of Immediate Early Genes have not been studied in POMC neurons or any other hypothalamic population. Here, we have generated a single cell transcriptomic dataset from the hypothalami of adult male mice that were fed a 60% high fat diet for 6 weeks after Npas4 gene knockout specifically in POMC neurons, with or without a 1 hour refeed after an overnight fast. Our aim was to use this dataset to identify genes that are rapidly regulated by refeeding within 1 hour, as well as potential long-term transcriptomic differences as a result of the Npas4 knockout, in the general POMC neuron population. Overall design: Adult male mice of either the POMC-CreER (CT) control genotype or POMC-NPAS4 KO (KO) genotype were used. Tamoxifen was administered to all mice at 6 weeks of age, and mice were fed a 60% high fat diet (HFD) from 7 weeks of age. 7 CT and 6 KO mice were used total to generate this dataset. All mice were fasted overnight before their hypothalamus was harvested. 4 CT mice and 3 KO mice were refed for 1 hour after the overnight fast, before harvest, resulting in 13 samples total with minimum n=3 per group (4 refed CT, 3 fasted CT, 3 refed KO, and 3 fasted KO).