Obesity is a major health risk that can lead to numerous complications such as heart disease and type II diabetes. In order to find a way to counter the obesity pandemic and promote weight loss, thermogenic mechanisms were examined as a method to burn caloric energy as heat in skeletal muscle, a novel approach. In the brain, both the melanocortin system and the ventromedial hypothalamus play important roles in energy balance and thermogenesis. The activation of melanocortin receptors in this brain region induced heat dissipation in skeletal muscle. Within skeletal myocytes, sarcolipin modulates sarcoplasmic reticulum calcium ATPase (SERCA), uncoupling energy use from calcium cycling. Here, we investigated the expression of sarcolipin to determine its potential as a modulator of centrally induced thermogenesis within skeletal muscle. Quantitative PCR was used to compare sarcolipin expression in gastrocnemius muscle from rats that had been given brain injections of melanotan II, a melanocortin receptor agonist, to the sarcolipin expression in rat muscle that received vehicle control injections. There was significantly higher muscle sarcolipin mRNA expression in the rats that had received brain injections of melanotan II than those that did not. This implicates muscle sarcolipin as a driver of melanocortin-induced thermogenesis. Activating this thermogenic mechanism in skeletal muscle has exciting potential to work as an effective way to burn calories and help combat obesity.