OxTalks Change Freeze Starts 2 March
Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. The two-week OxTalks freeze period starts on Monday 2nd March. During this time, there will be no facility to publish or edit events. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period. Once Oxford Events launches, you will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
The perineurium integrates leptin with its sympathetic outflow to protect against obesity
This is a virtual event; please contact events@dpag.ox.ac.uk for Teams Link
The regulatory mechanism of leptin’s afferent action in the brain, constituting a negative feedback loop, is contingent upon the efferent sympathetic innervation of white and brown adipose tissues. Nonetheless, the peripheral regulation governing the relative strengths of the afferent and efferent arms remains ambiguous. Using single-cell RNA sequencing on murine sympathetic ganglia, we identified the enriched expression of both the leptin receptor (Lepr) and the β2 adrenergic receptor (Adrb2) in perineurial cells that form a barrier around sympathetic ganglia and nerve bundles in adipose tissues. We show that Lepr+ Sympathetic Perineurial Cells (SPCs) are molecularly similar to endothelial cells and that conditional knockout of Adrb2 in Lepr+ SPCs predisposes mice to obesity by lowering the energy expenditure and thermogenic activity without affecting food intake. The obesogenic phenotype was exclusively observed in male mice. Notably, we found that hyperleptinemia associated with obesity causes apoptosis in SPCs, leading to a significant erosion of the perineurial barrier and concomitant adipose sympathetic neuropathy. We further show that this deleterious effect can be reversed by partial reduction of leptin or by sympathomimetic β2 adrenergic receptor agonism. These results have relevance to human obesity, as we observed a male-specific synergistic effect of highly common polymorphisms of LEPR and ADRB2 on the risk of increased BMI in a large European population. We propose that SPCs coordinate the afferent and efferent arms of the neuroendocrine loop of leptin action to regulate energy expenditure and body weight.
Date:
27 February 2026, 16:00
Venue:
This is a virtual event; please contact events@dpag.ox.ac.uk for Teams Link
Speaker:
Dr Gitalee Sarker (DPAG, University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG)
Organiser contact email address:
events@dpag.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Neuroscience Theme Guest Speakers (DPAG)
Booking required?:
Required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Hannah Simm
