Endocrine Abstracts

Beige adipocytes can be induced from white adipocytes (WAT) and precursors upon stimulation by cold temperatures and act like brown adipocytes (BAT) to increase energy expenditure. Most in vivo studies examining the mechanisms for the induction of beige/brown adipocytes have focused on subcutaneous white adipose tissue (sWAT) in the mouse. To better understand the development of beige/brown adipocytes from mammalian sWAT, we induced WAT and BAT from 3T3-L1 preadipocytes by exposure to classical differentiation protocols. We transdifferentiated BAT from 3T3-L1 white adipocytes by stimulus β3-adrenergic agonist (CL316,243). Furthermore, we used RNA-Seq to investigate whether differentiation protocol can influence the transcriptome of adipocyte browning. The expression of white and brown fat-specific markers was increased in WAT and BAT after 10 days of differentiation. At 6 days differentiation treatment of white adipocyte with CL316,243 for 48 h produced more adipocytes with multilocular phenotype, typical of brown adipocytes. An increase in uncoupler protein-1(UCP1) and Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ co-activator-1α (PGC-1α) and decrease aP2, white adipocyte marker suggested that CL316,243 transdifferentiates browning. RNA-seq was used to determine genes regulated by the fat browning process and identify the key differences between the two functionally distinct adipocytes. Taken together, we provide detailed adipocyte-specific gene expression profiles affected by adipocyte trans-differentiation.