Adipose tissue in health and disease through the lens of its building blocks.
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Abstract Background Highly specialized cells work in synergy forming tissues to perform functions required for the survival of organisms. Understanding this tissue-specific cellular heterogeneity and homeostasis is essential to comprehend the development of diseases within the tissue and also for developing regenerative therapies. Cellular subpopulations in the adipose tissue have been related to disease development, but efforts towards characterizing the adipose tissue cell type composition are limited due to lack of robust cell surface markers, limited access to tissue samples, and the labor-intensive process required to identify them. Results We propose a framework, identifying cellular heterogeneity while providing state-of-the-art cellular markers for each cell type present in tissues using transcriptomics level analysis. We validate our approach with an independent dataset and present the most comprehensive study of adipose tissue cell type composition to date, determining the relative amounts of 21 different cell types in 779 adipose tissue samples detailing differences across four adipose tissue depots, between genders, across ranges of BMI and in different stages of type-2 diabetes. We also highlight the heterogeneity in reported marker-based studies of adipose tissue cell type composition and provide novel cellular markers to distinguish different cell types within the adipose tissue. Conclusions Our study provides a systematic framework for studying cell type composition in a given tissue and valuable insights into adipose tissue cell type heterogeneity in health and disease.
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Despite accounting for only 50-60% of total cell number, adipocytes comprise over 85% of the volume in white adipose tissue.
“Despite accounting for only 50–60% of the total cell number, adipocytes comprise over 85% of the volume in white AT (Lenz et al., 2020).”
From Effect of Exercise Training on Fat Loss—Energetic Perspectives and the Role of Improved Adipose Tissue Function and Body Fat Distribution (2021) · cites this paper as Lenz et al., 2020
The Discussion (page unavailable) estimates the median adipocyte fraction at 55–80%, which overlaps the claimed 50–60% but does not establish that specific range for white adipose tissue. Neither that passage nor the Results passages on cell composition report that adipocytes occupy over 85% of its volume. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredNon-adipocytes in adipose tissue include immune cells, preadipocytes, endothelial cells, and fibroblasts, known collectively as the stromal vascular fraction.
“Non-adipocytes in AT include immune cells, preadipocytes, endothelial cells, and fibroblasts (Lenz et al., 2020), known collectively as the stromal vascular fraction (Bourin et al., 2013).”
From Effect of Exercise Training on Fat Loss—Energetic Perspectives and the Role of Improved Adipose Tissue Function and Body Fat Distribution (2021) · cites this paper as Lenz et al., 2020
The Introduction identifies immune, endothelial, and stem/stromal cells in adipose tissue, and Methods > TissueDecoder Framework includes fibroblasts among the cell types considered (page unavailable). Our copy does not explicitly identify preadipocytes as a non-adipocyte cell type. The stromal vascular fraction wording is cited to Bourin et al., not Lenz et al., in the printed sentence. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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References 51 · Cited by 89
- Authors
- Lenz, M., Arts, I. C. W., Peeters, R. L. M., de Kok, T. M., & Ertaylan, G.
- Affiliations
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (DE)
- Maastricht University (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Lenz, Michael
- Ertaylan, Gökhan
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2020-06-26
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 10433-10433
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7319996
- OpenAlex
- W3038114785
- Cited by
- 89
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 7.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Adipose Tissue and Metabolism
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Adipokines, Inflammation, and Metabolic Diseases
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Keywords
- adipose tissue, cell type composition, cellular heterogeneity, gene expression deconvolution, transcriptomics, adipose tissue depots, type 2 diabetes, body mass index, sex differences, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, stromal vascular cells, epicardial adipose tissue, pericardial adipose tissue, immune cells, cell markers
- MeSH terms
- Adipose Tissue, Humans, Obesity, Adipocytes, Databases, Genetic, Transcriptome
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