Identification of a natural beige adipose depot in mice.
Beige fat is a potential therapeutic target for obesity and other metabolic diseases due to its inducible brown fat-like functions. Inguinal white adipose tissue (iWAT) can undergo robust brown remodeling with appropriate stimuli and is therefore widely considered as a representative beige fat depot. However, adipose tissues residing in different anatomic depots exhibit a broad range of plasticity, raising the possibility that better beige fat depots with greater plasticity may exist. Here we identified and characterized a novel, naturally-existing beige fat depot, thigh adipose tissue (tAT). Unlike classic WATs, tAT maintains beige fat morphology at room temperature, whereas high-fat diet (HFD) feeding or aging promotes the development of typical WAT features, namely unilocular adipocytes. The brown adipocyte gene expression in tAT is consistently higher than in iWAT under cold exposure, HFD feeding, and rosiglitazone treatment conditions. Our molecular profiling by RNA-Seq revealed up-regulation of energy expenditure pathways and repressed inflammation in tAT relative to eWAT and iWAT. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the master fatty acid oxidation regulator peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α is dispensable for maintaining and activating the beige character of tAT. Therefore, we have identified tAT as a natural beige adipose depot in mice with a unique molecular profile that does not require peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α.
['Chan|Michelle|M|0000-0001-6037-7051', 'Lim|Yen Ching|YC|', 'Yang|Jing|J|', 'Namwanje|Maria|M|', 'Liu|Longhua|L|', 'Qiang|Li|L|0000-0001-8322-1797']
D000069796:Adipose Tissue, Beige D052436:Adipose Tissue, White D000818:Animals D015415:Biomarkers D059305:Diet, High-Fat D006965:Hyperplasia D008297:Male D051379:Mice D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL D009765:Obesity D047493:PPAR alpha D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA D045162:Thiazolidinediones D013848:Thigh D059467:Transcriptome
beige fat obesity browning adipose tissue adipocyte metabolic regulation peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)