The US Johns Hopkins team made the breakthrough in rats but believe the same could be done in humans, offering the hope of a new way to treat obesity.
Modifying the expression of a protein linked to appetite not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but also transformed their fat composition.
"Bad" white fat became "good" brown fat, Cell Metabolism journal reports.
Brown fat is abundant in babies, which they use as a power source to generate body heat, expending calories at the same time.
But as we age our brown fat largely disappears and gets replaced by "bad" white fat, which typically sits as a spare tyre around the waist.
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