Go to JCI Insight
  • About
  • Editors
  • Consulting Editors
  • For authors
  • Publication ethics
  • Publication alerts by email
  • Advertising
  • Job board
  • Contact
  • Clinical Research and Public Health
  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • By specialty
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Gastroenterology
    • Immunology
    • Metabolism
    • Nephrology
    • Neuroscience
    • Oncology
    • Pulmonology
    • Vascular biology
    • All ...
  • Videos
    • Conversations with Giants in Medicine
    • Video Abstracts
  • Reviews
    • View all reviews ...
    • Complement Biology and Therapeutics (May 2025)
    • Evolving insights into MASLD and MASH pathogenesis and treatment (Apr 2025)
    • Microbiome in Health and Disease (Feb 2025)
    • Substance Use Disorders (Oct 2024)
    • Clonal Hematopoiesis (Oct 2024)
    • Sex Differences in Medicine (Sep 2024)
    • Vascular Malformations (Apr 2024)
    • View all review series ...
  • Viewpoint
  • Collections
    • In-Press Preview
    • Clinical Research and Public Health
    • Research Letters
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Editorials
    • Commentaries
    • Editor's notes
    • Reviews
    • Viewpoints
    • 100th anniversary
    • Top read articles

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Specialties
  • Reviews
  • Review series
  • Conversations with Giants in Medicine
  • Video Abstracts
  • In-Press Preview
  • Clinical Research and Public Health
  • Research Letters
  • Letters to the Editor
  • Editorials
  • Commentaries
  • Editor's notes
  • Reviews
  • Viewpoints
  • 100th anniversary
  • Top read articles
  • About
  • Editors
  • Consulting Editors
  • For authors
  • Publication ethics
  • Publication alerts by email
  • Advertising
  • Job board
  • Contact
Low- and high-thermogenic brown adipocyte subpopulations coexist in murine adipose tissue
Anying Song, … , Philipp E. Scherer, Qiong A. Wang
Anying Song, … , Philipp E. Scherer, Qiong A. Wang
Published October 1, 2019
Citation Information: J Clin Invest. 2020;130(1):247-257. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI129167.
View: Text | PDF
Research Article Metabolism Article has an altmetric score of 10

Low- and high-thermogenic brown adipocyte subpopulations coexist in murine adipose tissue

  • Text
  • PDF
Abstract

Brown adipose tissue (BAT), as the main site of adaptive thermogenesis, exerts beneficial metabolic effects on obesity and insulin resistance. BAT has been previously assumed to contain a homogeneous population of brown adipocytes. Utilizing multiple mouse models capable of genetically labeling different cellular populations, as well as single-cell RNA sequencing and 3D tissue profiling, we discovered a brown adipocyte subpopulation with low thermogenic activity coexisting with the classical high-thermogenic brown adipocytes within the BAT. Compared with the high-thermogenic brown adipocytes, these low-thermogenic brown adipocytes had substantially lower Ucp1 and Adipoq expression, larger lipid droplets, and lower mitochondrial content. Functional analyses showed that, unlike the high-thermogenic brown adipocytes, the low-thermogenic brown adipocytes have markedly lower basal mitochondrial respiration, and they are specialized in fatty acid uptake. Upon changes in environmental temperature, the 2 brown adipocyte subpopulations underwent dynamic interconversions. Cold exposure converted low-thermogenic brown adipocytes into high-thermogenic cells. A thermoneutral environment had the opposite effect. The recruitment of high-thermogenic brown adipocytes by cold stimulation is not affected by high-fat diet feeding, but it does substantially decline with age. Our results revealed a high degree of functional heterogeneity of brown adipocytes.

Authors

Anying Song, Wenting Dai, Min Jee Jang, Leonard Medrano, Zhuo Li, Hu Zhao, Mengle Shao, Jiayi Tan, Aimin Li, Tinglu Ning, Marcia M. Miller, Brian Armstrong, Janice M. Huss, Yi Zhu, Yong Liu, Viviana Gradinaru, Xiwei Wu, Lei Jiang, Philipp E. Scherer, Qiong A. Wang

×

Figure 6

Brown adipocytes were born as adiponectin high expressors, and heterogeneity establishes after birth.

Options: View larger image (or click on image) Download as PowerPoint
Brown adipocytes were born as adiponectin high expressors, and heterogen...
(A) Female mice carrying only Adn-rtTA and Rosa26-loxP-stop-loxP-LacZ were bred with AdipoChaser-LacZ male mice. When these female mice were pregnant, they were exposed to dox-containing chow diet during E3–E10 (I), E7–E14 (II), E9–E16 (III), or E18– P4(IV), and kept on regular chow diet thereafter. Offspring of the female mice were genotyped, and AdipoChaser-LacZ mice of both sexual phenotypes were used for LacZ staining when they were 4 weeks or 27 weeks old. (B–D) Representative X-gal staining of BAT from 4-week-old AdipoChaser-LacZ mice that were on dox diet for the indicated number of days during development. (E) Representative X-gal staining of BAT from 27-week-old AdipoChaser-LacZ mice that were on dox diet during E18–P4. Scale bars: 100 μm (B–E). (F) Female mice carrying only Adn-rtTA and Rosa26-loxP-stop-loxP-LacZ were bred with AdipoChaser-LacZ male mice. When the female mice were pregnant, they were exposed to dox-containing chow diet during E7–P2 (V), P3–P10 (VI), or P7–P14 (VII), and kept on regular chow diet thereafter. Offspring of the female mice were genotyped, and male AdipoChaser-LacZ mice were used for LacZ staining when they were 8 weeks old. (G) Representative X-gal staining of BAT from the AdipoChaser-LacZ mice that were on dox diet for the indicated number of days during development. Scale bar: 50 μm. All images are representative of 3 independent experiments.

Copyright © 2025 American Society for Clinical Investigation
ISSN: 0021-9738 (print), 1558-8238 (online)

Sign up for email alerts

Posted by 14 X users
On 1 Facebook pages
Highlighted by 1 platforms
159 readers on Mendeley
See more details