Abstract
The perception of adipose tissue, both in the scientific community and in the general population, has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. While adipose tissue was thought for a long time to be a rather simple lipid storage entity, it is now recognized as a highly heterogeneous organ and a critical regulator of systemic metabolism, composed of many different subtypes of cells, with important endocrine functions. Additionally, adipose tissue is nowadays recognized to contribute to energy turnover, due to the presence of specialized thermogenic adipocytes, which can be found in many adipose depots. This review discusses the unprecedented insights that we have gained into the heterogeneity of thermogenic adipocytes and their respective precursors due to the technical developments in single-cell and nucleus technologies. These methodological advances have increased our understanding of how adipose tissue catabolic function is influenced by developmental and intercellular communication events.
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Acknowledgements
We thank members of the laboratory of C.W. and Ian Mitchell for helpful discussions. Research in the laboratory of C.W. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 185011).
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W.S. and C.W. wrote the main text. S.M. contributed to illustrating the figures. H.D. contributed Fig. 3.
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Sun, W., Modica, S., Dong, H. et al. Plasticity and heterogeneity of thermogenic adipose tissue. Nat Metab 3, 751–761 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-021-00417-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-021-00417-4
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