Penk cre

All experiments were conducted with 12–20-week-old wild-type C57BL/6J, Penk-Cre (stock no. 025112), and Lepr-Cre (stock no. 008320) mice, which were attained from the Jackson Laboratory. Penk-Cre and Lepr-Cre mice for all experiments were crossed with C57BL/6J mice for several generations before use. To visualize the Penk-positive neurons, Penk-Cre mice were crossed with Ai14 mice (stock no. 007908; tdTomato reporter line; Jackson Laboratory). Male and female mice were used for all experiments, including immunohistochemistry, FISH, anatomical tracing, food intake measurements, and behavioral experiments. Mice were group housed on a 12-h light/dark cycle with standard bedding in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room (~21 °C and 42% humidity). All behavioral experimentations were performed during the light cycle. Experimenters were blinded to the group allocation and outcome assessment. All experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.