KCNJ2 and obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency: As we recently showed that obesity does not appear to influence the contributions of KCa channels to the dilatory response that remained in VAT arteries, which was unaffected by Kir2.1 inhibition and could be restored with endothelial overexpression of Kir2.1 (5, 11), we focused on Kir2.1 in the present study.