Lipolysis Triggers a Systemic Insulin Response Essential for Efficient Energy Replenishment of Activated Brown Adipose Tissue in Mice
Part of the results reproduced; minor but material deviations remained.
Every item that counted toward this verdict, and the exact part of the reproduction that produced it.
- ✓No relevant deviation in data/preprocessing
- ✓No authors-side cause for any deviation
- ✓Any deviation was negligible
- 🔴Could not use the authors’ exact input data
- 🔴Reported values were only indirectly comparable
- 🟡Reported values were not (fully) derivable from the shared data
- 🟡The central claim did not (fully) hold under reproduction
- 🟡Overall, the reproduction showed a material discrepancy
▸Reproduction agent’s raw note
DROP (non_pipeline). 'Lipolysis Triggers a Systemic Insulin Response...' (Heine et al., Cell Metabolism 28(4):644-655, 2018; DOI 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.06.020) is a wet-lab mouse in-vivo physiology study: cold / beta3-adrenergic (CL-316,243) stimulation -> WAT lipolysis -> systemic insulin response -> insulin-dependent fuel uptake into activated BAT, using genetic (adipocyte Atgl-/-) models. Its reported results come from physiological assays and instrument readouts (plasma ELISA/colorimetric insulin/glucose/NEFA/TG, GTT/ITT, radiolabeled tracer & 18F-FDG organ uptake, indirect calorimetry/telemetry, targeted RT-qPCR, Western blot, histology) -- NOT from a bioinformatic pipeline run on a deposited dataset. Three independent metadata checks concur there is nothing in scope: Europe PMC core record (EXT_ID:30033199) has hasDbCrossReferences='N' with no accessions and is not flagged as sequencing/omics; GEO gds search returns 'No items found'; there is no PMC full text. No RNA-seq/microarray/proteomics/lipidomics/metabolomics, no GEO/SRA/ArrayExpress/PRIDE/MetaboLights accession, and no analysis-code repository (GitHub/Zenodo). NOT ATTEMPTED: any compute -- there is no in-scope pipeline result to reproduce, so zero «our HPC» compute was spent (correct). LIMITATION: the publisher STAR Methods text was not machine-readable (cell.com / ScienceDirect return HTTP 403 / Cloudflare), so the verbatim Data-and-Code-Availability statement is not quoted; the drop does not depend on it. If a human auditor with publisher access finds deposited data/code, re-open. Note: operator «email» is the 3rd author of this paper.
These records describe the outcome of reproduction attempts carried out autonomously by brainbox using large language models (LLMs). They are not peer review, not an audit, and not a determination of error or misconduct by any author. A verdict reflects what one attempt could or could not reproduce — which may depend on data access, undocumented parameters, the computing environment, or the depth of effort — and not a judgement of the people who did the work. We can be wrong, and we correct mistakes quickly: every record carries a “report an error” button.
Assessment versions
Every reproduction run is kept as an immutable version — anchored to the data as it stood, with a tamper-evident chain hash. A rerun (e.g. after an author updates a deposit) adds a new version; the previous one stays on record.
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v1 current initial assessmentassessed: 2026-06-18 ⛓ b9ad742dc93f
✎ I am an author of this paper
Updated or fixed a deposit, or is there an erratum? Ask us to re-run the metrics. We verify by email first; the new result is published as a new version with full history — nothing is overwritten.
Provenance — full disclosure
When this reproduction was carried out, which methodology version was used, and by whom — so the record can be audited and checked independently.
- Reproduced
- 2026-06-18
- Rubric version
- v1.0
- Assessed by
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🤖 AI curator · claude (ai-curator room) · v1.0 · run #1 2026-06-18no human curator yet
- Last updated
- 2026-08-05
Provisional, curator- or AI-assessed, and independently checkable. A reproduction outcome states what one attempt could reproduce — not a judgement of the authors.
What was reproduced
The exact results taken into scope, with each reported value next to the value our attempt produced.
Scope assessment — PMID 30033199
Title: Lipolysis Triggers a Systemic Insulin Response Essential for Efficient Energy Replenishment of Activated Brown Adipose Tissue in Mice Journal: Cell Metabolism 28(4):644–655, Oct 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.06.020 Authors: Heine, Fischer, Schlein, Jung, Straub, Gottschling, Mangels, Yuan, Nilsson, Liebscher, Chen, Schreiber, Zechner, Scheja, Heeren (Heeren corresponding).
Note: «email» (this operator) is the 3rd author of this paper.
Question this brief asks
Reproduce the pipeline-derived computational results from publicly deposited data, and profile every dataset the paper relies on.
What the paper actually is
A wet-lab mouse in-vivo physiology study. It shows that acute cold exposure or β3-adrenergic (CL-316,243) stimulation triggers WAT lipolysis → a systemic insulin response → insulin-dependent fuel (glucose/lipid) uptake into activated BAT, using genetic models (adipocyte-specific Atgl⁻/⁻ / Pnpla2, etc.).
Reported results and their origin (in-scope = bioinformatic pipeline?)
| Result class in the paper | Method that produced it | In scope? |
|---|---|---|
| Plasma insulin / glucose / NEFA / TG time courses | ELISA / colorimetric plasma assays | NO — wet-lab assay |
| Glucose & insulin tolerance tests | In-vivo GTT/ITT | NO — wet-lab |
| Organ-specific tracer uptake (¹⁴C/³H-labeled glucose & lipid, ¹⁸F-FDG) | Radiotracer / PET organ uptake in mice | NO — wet-lab |
| Indirect calorimetry / energy expenditure / body temperature | Metabolic cages, telemetry | NO — instrument readout |
| Gene expression of selected genes | RT-qPCR (targeted, not sequencing) | NO — targeted assay, no deposited matrix |
| Protein levels | Western blot | NO — wet-lab |
| Histology / lipid droplet morphology | Microscopy | NO — wet-lab/manual |
There is no RNA-seq, microarray, scRNA-seq, ATAC, proteomics, lipidomics or metabolomics dataset, no GEO/SRA/ArrayExpress/PRIDE/MetaboLights accession, and no analysis-code repository (GitHub/Zenodo).
Evidence checked (control-plane, no compute)
- Europe PMC core record (EXT_ID:30033199):
hasDbCrossReferences: "N", no accession numbers; explicitly "does not appear to involve sequencing or omics analysis." MeSH (all major): Insulin, Lipolysis, Cold Temperature, Insulin-Secreting Cells, Brown Adipose Tissue, White Adipose Tissue, β3-AR. - GEO DataSets (
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/?term=30033199): "No items found." - PMC: no PMC full-text / PMCID — not in the OA subset.
- Unpaywall: is_oa=true (bronze, publisher PDF only); PDF + cell.com + ScienceDirect all return HTTP 403 / Cloudflare to automated fetch, so the STAR Methods text could not be machine-read. Decision does not depend on it: the independent metadata above already establishes there is no deposited dataset or code.
Verdict
DROP — non_pipeline. No reported result is derived from a bioinformatic
pipeline run on a deposited dataset; there is no public data accession and no
analysis-code repository to run. Compounding reasons: no_data_accession,
no_code. This is a feasibility/scope drop made on the control plane — no
«our HPC» compute was spent (correct: nothing to run). Drops are an explicitly
valid outcome per the brief and feed the attrition curve.
Not attempted (and why)
Nothing was attempted because no in-scope computational result exists. The paper's conclusions are sound wet-lab physiology but are outside this study's reproduction scope (pipeline-derived results from deposited data).
No individual results have been recorded for this entry yet.
Assessments & scoring basis
Each contributor’s verdict, the per-question basis, and the auditable, itemised worksheet behind it.
An automated assessment. It can flag an open question for review but can never, on its own, record a discrepancy verdict (C5) against a paper.
Every item that counted toward this verdict, and the exact part of the reproduction that produced it.
This is a legitimate non_pipeline drop: Heine et al. 2018 (Cell Metabolism) is wet-lab mouse in-vivo physiology whose reported values are instrument/assay readouts, with no deposited dataset, accession, or analysis code (confirmed by Europe PMC, GEO, and PMC checks). The issue is data availability / scope, not an authors' defect or fabrication, so q5/q7 are yellow (untestable) rather than red. No compute was spent and no deviation was computed, so severity is negligible; overall it is a clean, well-documented drop that simply cannot be reproduced 1:1. (Note: operator is the paper's 3rd author — no bearing on the scope verdict.)
Automated reproduction checks whether a published result can be regenerated from the paper’s described methods and shared data. When something does not reproduce, that is not a claim of error or misconduct — most often it reflects under-described methods, software or environment differences, or gaps in data access, and some of the pre-print papers in the queue may carry issues their authors had no part in. The goal is shared awareness that rigorous, fully-described methods help everyone — never a judgement of any author.
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Reproduction footprint
claude-opus-4-8Measured resources invested to assess this paper — sanitised (machine class only, no job ids/paths). Compute = HPC accounting (SLURM); tokens = the AI agent's session.