Unique genetic and histological signatures of mouse pericardial adipose tissue

Al-Dibouni, A., Gaspar, R., Ige, S., Boateng, S., Cagampang, F. R., Gibbins, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0372-5352, Cox, R. D. and Sellayah, D. (2020) Unique genetic and histological signatures of mouse pericardial adipose tissue. Nutrients, 12 (6). 1855. ISSN 2072-6643 doi: 10.3390/nu12061855

Abstract/Summary

Obesity is a major risk factor for a plethora of metabolic disturbances including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Accumulating evidence is showing that there is an adipose tissue depot-dependent relationship with obesity-induced metabolic dysfunction. While some adipose depots, such as subcutaneous fat, are generally metabolically innocuous, others such as visceral fat, are directly deleterious. A lesser known visceral adipose depot is the pericardial adipose tissue depot. We therefore set out to examine its transcriptional and morphological signature under chow and high-fat fed conditions, in comparison with other adipose depots, using a mouse model. Our results revealed that under chow conditions pericardial adipose tissue has uncoupling-protein 1 gene expression levels which are significantly higher than classical subcutaneous and visceral adipose depots. We also observed that under high-fat diet conditions, the pericardial adipose depot exhibits greatly upregulated transcript levels of inflammatory cytokines. Our results collectively indicate, for the first time, that the pericardial adipose tissue possesses a unique transcriptional and histological signature which has features of both a beige (brown fat-like) but also pro-inflammatory depot, such as visceral fat. This unique profile may be involved in metabolic dysfunction associated with obesity.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/91375
Identification Number/DOI	10.3390/nu12061855
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Biomedical Sciences
Publisher	MDPI
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