Study finds various kinds of human white fat cells
Discovering that white fat cells aren't all the same can help researchers better understand the role of fat cells in disease.
The risks connected with white adipose tissue, or white surplus fat, depend somewhat on where that fat is.
For instance, intra-abdominal fat (stomach fat) is more likely to result in diabetes and other metabolic conditions than white body fat located just beneath your skin (such as for example in the hips and thighs).
Now, however - according to a fresh paper from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and Boston University, both in Massachusetts - it would appear that there is more to it than that: There are at least two distinct classes of subcutaneous white fat cells.
“A central question in our research on metabolic disease is whether white fat cells in several areas of the body, and even within an individual portion of the body, will vary enough that some might predispose you to disease plus some may not,” says co-senior author C. Ronald Kahn, your physician and scientist.
Immature white fat cells do not follow a single, universal trajectory to maturity. They can develop different patterns of gene expression.
Kahn is hopeful that “determining the mechanisms for these dissimilarities could bring about development of novel therapies for diabetes, obesity, and related conditions.”
Tip of the iceberg
Although previous research had recognized multiple types of white fat cells in mice, this is among the first to did so in humans.
The paper is the product of an unusual collaboration, says Kahn. According to senior co-author Simon Kasif, a biomedical engineer, “The analysis highlights the potential of bringing interdisciplinary expertise from four laboratories to integrate biology, artificial intelligence, systems biology, and data obtained from clinical samples to catalyze discovery.”
Although the study discovered two different types of white fat cells, that that are the start. “We think this research may be the tip of the iceberg - if we study more samples of human fat, we will see more subtypes,” says Kahn.
Pairs of teams
Single-cell RNA sequencing allows scientists to track the genetic development of single fat cells from their precursor, or “preadipocyte,” stage with their mature patterns of gene expression.
Because of this project, the researchers used white subcutaneous fat cells from a biobank of specimens that scientists had previously collected from healthy individuals.
Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA, and the Joslin laboratory of Yu-Hua Tseng then performed single-cell RNA sequencing on these samples.
Researchers performed a analysis of both datasets using a novel mathematical technique that helped reveal the cells’ patterns of gene expression. It revealed that the datasets depicted two distinct white fat cell subtypes.
powered by Rubicon Project
Two different subtypes
To get started with, as preadipocytes, one subtype expressed much higher degrees of “zinc nuclear finger” genes. That is a set of master regulator genes, the function which researchers usually do not yet understand. However, they may help control cells’ maturation, say the paper’s authors.
Furthermore, at maturity, the two cell subtypes exhibited completely different patterns of gene expression.
The patterns in a single subtype, for example, indicated a drastically higher intake of glucose, which is a crucial metabolic resource.
“Body fat is associated with many different conditions beyond diabetes. This research could be important for understanding the risk factors for other metabolic diseases, such as for example fatty liver disease and atherosclerosis, and even non-metabolic diseases that are increased by obesity, such as for example cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”
- C. Ronald Kahn
That white fat cells could be different from one another also fits with another growing area of research.
According to Kasif: “Metabolic diseases are highly connected with environmental factors. This work supports the relatively understudied hypothesis that environmental factors may modify the trajectory of how cells develop and our knowledge of how this technique may influence biology and metabolic disease.”
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
