Once considered inert, white adipose tissue (or white fat) is now recognized to be dynamic and to play interactive roles in a wide array of biological and metabolic processes. Diet and energy expenditure can cause dramatic changes to the physiology, behavior, and cellular make-up of white adipose tissue, and these changes, in turn, are linked with metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes.
Now, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have generated an atlas of the cell types present in the white adipose tissue of humans and of mice, allowing them to explore the composition of white fat in unprecedented detail. Their work describes novel subpopulations of fat cells, and links specific cell types to increased risk of metabolic disease. The team’s findings, published in the journal Nature, lay the groundwork for future studies of the complex underpinnings of body weight, metabolism, and disease.
