Scientists turn up calorie-burning in brown fat with a unique ‘on’ switch

An exceptional receptor on the surface of brown fat cells drives calorie-burning without the need for an external signaling molecule. Mice genetically engineered to overproduce this receptor, GPR3, in brown fat were completely protected from metabolic disease despite being continuously fed a high caloric diet. The scientists behind this discovery at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR), at the University of Copenhagen, believe their findings upend the current dogma describing how cell surface receptors work, while opening the door to new approaches for treating obesity.