*3.5. Housekeeping Genes PCR Array*

rWAT and BAT total RNA (0.5 ΐg) of 2 mice per group were reversed transcribed using the RT2 First Strand Kit and further analyzed by the Mouse Housekeeping Genes PCR array (Qiagen, Germantown, MD, USA), which analyzed 12 commonly used housekeeping genes in a 96-well plate. Briefly, 1 ΐL cDNA (1 ng/ΐL), 12.5 ΐ<sup>L</sup> RT2 SYBR Green Mastermix and 11.25 ΐL water were loaded into primer-precoated wells, and PCR was performed using a StepOnePlus Real-Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). Data were analyzed by three popular algorithms: GeNorm [62], NormFinder [63] and BestKeeper [64]. Ά-actin was shown to be the most stable and suitable reference gene in our study. 
