Directing visceral white adipocyte precursors to a thermogenic adipocyte fate improves insulin sensitivity in obese mice

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
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Abstract

Visceral adiposity confers significant risk for developing metabolic disease in obesity whereas preferential expansion of subcutaneous white adipose tissue (WAT) appears protective. Unlike subcutaneous WAT, visceral WAT is resistant to adopting a protective thermogenic phenotype characterized by the accumulation of Ucp1⁺ beige/BRITE adipocytes (termed "browning"). In this study, we investigated the physiological consequences of browning murine visceral WAT by selective genetic ablation of Zfp423, a transcriptional suppressor of the adipocyte thermogenic program. Zfp423 deletion in fetal visceral adipose precursors (Zfp423^loxP/loxP; Wt1-Cre), or adult visceral white adipose precursors (Pdgfrb^rtTA; TRE-Cre; Zfp423^loxP/loxP), results in the accumulation of beige-like thermogenic adipocytes within multiple visceral adipose depots. Thermogenic visceral WAT improves cold tolerance and prevents and reverses insulin resistance in obesity. These data indicate that beneficial visceral WAT browning can be engineered by directing visceral white adipocyte precursors to a thermogenic adipocyte fate, and suggest a novel strategy to combat insulin resistance in obesity.

Data availability

The following data sets were generated

1. Gupta RK
2. Hepler C
(2017) Adipose tissue from β-3 agonist-treated mice
Publicly available at the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (accession no: GSE98132).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE98132

Article and author information

Author details

Chelsea Hepler

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mengle Shao

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jonathan Y Xia

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Alexandra L Ghaben

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mackenzie J Pearson

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Lavanya Vishvanath

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Ankit X Sharma

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Thomas S Morley

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
William L Holland

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Rana K Gupta

Touchstone Diabetes Center, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, United States

For correspondence
Rana.Gupta@UTSouthwestern.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9001-4531

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01 DK104789)

Rana K Gupta

National Institutes of Health (R00-DK094973)

William L Holland

American Heart Association (16POST26420136)

Mengle Shao

Searle Scholars Program

Rana K Gupta

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (5-CDA-2014-185-A-N)

William L Holland

National Institutes of Health (F30 DK100095)

Jonathan Y Xia

National Institutes of Health (T32 GM008203)

Chelsea Hepler

National Institutes of Health (F31DK113696)

Chelsea Hepler

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (APN 2012-0072 and APN 2015-101207 ) of UTSW Medical Center.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.