The modulation of brown adipose tissue activity and browning of white adipose tissue has been proposed as a promising therapeutic strategy in the treatment of obesity-associated metabolic disturbances (Wu et al., 2012; Bartelt and Heeren, 2014; Hepler et al., 2017; Rabhi et al., 2018; Zhang S. et al., 2018), with the intention of improving insulin sensitivity (Hepler et al., 2017; Rabhi et al., 2018) and hepatic steatosis (Huang et al., 2017), among others. Here, INS is linked to obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.