Role of VGF-derived carboxy-terminal peptides in energy balance and reproduction: Analysis of "humanized" knockin mice expressing full-length or truncated VGF

Targeted deletion of VGF, a secreted neuronal and endocrine peptide precursor, produces lean, hypermetabolic, and infertile mice that are resistant to diet-, lesion-, and genetically-induced obesity and diabetes. Previous studies suggest that VGF controls energy expenditure (EE), fat storage, and lipolysis, whereas VGF C-terminal peptides also regulate reproductive behavior and glucose homeostasis. To assess the functional equivalence of human VGF1-615 (hVGF) and mouse VGF1-617 (mVGF), and to elucidate the function of the VGF C-terminal region in the regulation of energy balance and susceptibility to obesity,wegenerated humanized VGF knockin mouse models expressing full-length hVGF or a C-terminally deleted human VGF1-524 (hSNP), encoded by a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs35400704). We show that homozygous male and female hVGF and hSNP mice are fertile. hVGF female mice had significantly increased body weight compared with wild-type mice, whereas hSNP mice have reduced adiposity, increased activity- and nonactivity-related EE, and improved glucose tolerance, indicating thatVGFC-terminal peptides are not required for reproductive function, but 1 or more specific VGF C-terminal peptides are likely to be critical regulators of EE. Taken together, our results suggest that human and mouse VGF proteins are largely functionally conserved but that species-specific differences in VGF peptide function, perhaps a result of known differences in receptorbindingaffinity, likely alterthemetabolicphenotypeofhVGFcomparedwithmVGFmice,and in hSNP mice in which several C-terminal VGF peptides are ablated, result in significantly increased activity- and nonactivity-related EE.