正常人体内大约存在50g的棕色脂肪，消耗的日摄入能量甚至可以达20%之多。因此，棕色脂肪很可能是治疗肥胖以及相关疾病的强有力的靶器官。最近的研究结果表明，microRNA也是能够促进转分化的重要因子。与转录因子相比，microRNA序列较短，细胞和机体能够轻易吸收从而稳定地发挥作用；不仅如此，microRNA还不会整合到机体的基因组，安全高效。但有关microRNA促进白色脂肪棕色化的研究仍不多见。本课题拟利用高通量深度测序对小鼠白色脂肪和棕色脂肪的microRNA的差异表达进行研究，筛选棕色脂肪特异表达的microRNA，探索其潜在的白色脂肪棕色化的功能，揭示microRNA介导的白色脂肪向棕色脂肪转分化的分子机制，从而为开发新型抗肥胖药物建立细胞筛选平台。

It is estimated that only 50g of brown fat in adult humans could burn about 20% of an average daily caloric intake.Therefore,BAT could be a powerful target organ for treat obesity and related diseases.Recently, it has been shown that microRNA also could trans-differentiate one type of cells to another. In contrast to transcription factor, short length of microRNA can be easily absorbed by cell and organisms. In addition, microRNA is not able to integrate to the host genome, which makes it safer and more efficient from clinical standpoint. However, there are only few reports related to the microRNA mediated BAT trans-differentiation. In the current proposal, we aim to identify BAT specific microRNAs and investigate the potential role of its trans-differentiation ability, explore molecular mechanism of microRNA mediated BAT trans-differentiation, finally establish cell based screening platform for development of new class of anti-obesity drug.