Characterization of adipose depot-specific stromal cell populations by single-cell mass cytometry

Ju Hee Lee; Kafi N Ealey; Yash Patel; Navkiran Verma; Nikita Thakkar; So Young Park; Jae-Ryong Kim; Hoon-Ki Sung

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.104166

Characterization of adipose depot-specific stromal cell populations by single-cell mass cytometry

iScience. 2022 Mar 26;25(4):104166. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104166. eCollection 2022 Apr 15.

Authors

Ju Hee Lee^{1

2}, Kafi N Ealey¹, Yash Patel¹, Navkiran Verma^{1

2}, Nikita Thakkar^{1

2}, So Young Park³, Jae-Ryong Kim⁴, Hoon-Ki Sung^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Translational Medicine Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada.
² Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
³ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu 42415, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu 42415, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

The increased prevalence of obesity and metabolic diseases has heightened interest in adipose tissue biology and its potential as a therapeutic target. To better understand cellular heterogeneity and complexity of white adipose tissue (WAT), we employed cytometry by time-of-flight (CyTOF) to characterize immune and stromal cells in visceral and subcutaneous WAT depots under normal and high-fat diet feeding, by quantifying the expression levels of 32 surface marker proteins. We observed comparable proportions of immune cells in two WAT depots under steady state, but depot-distinct subtypes of adipose precursor cells (APC), suggesting differences in their adipogenic and fibrogenic potential. Furthermore, in addition to pro-inflammatory immune cell shifts, significant pro-fibrotic changes were observed in APCs under high-fat diet, suggesting that APCs are early responders to dietary challenges. We propose CyTOF as a complementary and alternative tool to current high-throughput single-cell transcriptomic analyses to better understand the function and plasticity of adipose tissue.

Keywords: Cell biology; Immunology; Specialized functions of cells.