Putative positive role of inflammatory genes in fat deposition supported by altered gene expression in purified human adipocytes and preadipocytes from lean and obese adipose tissues

Abstract BackgroundObesity is a chronic low-grade inflammatory disease that is generally characterized by enhanced inflammation in obese adipose tissue (AT). Here, we investigated alterations in gene expression between lean and obese conditions using mRNA-Seq data derived from human purified adipocytes (ACs) and preadipocytes (preACs). ResultsWe defined four classes of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) by comparing gene expression between 1) lean and obese ACs, 2) lean and obese preACs, 3) lean ACs and lean preACs, and 4) obese ACs and obese preACs. Based on an analysis of comparison 1, numerous canonical obesity-related genes, particularly inflammatory genes including IL6, TNF- and IL-1, i.e., the genes that are expected to be upregulated in obesity conditions, were found to be expressed at significantly lower levels in obese ACs than in lean ACs. In contrast, some inflammatory genes were found to be expressed at higher levels in obese preACs than lean preACs in the analysis of comparison 2. These two results indicate that (1) up-/downregulation of genes in ACs and preACs is inversely controlled during the fat deposition process and (2) preACs rather than ACs have increased inflammatory response genes in comparisons of lean and obese conditions for each of these cell types. Analysis of comparisons 3 and 4 showed that inflammatory gene classes were expressed at higher levels in differentiated ACs than undifferentiated preACs under both lean and obese conditions; however, the degree of upregulation was greater for lean than for obese conditions.ConclusionsTaken together, our analyses may suggest that lean fat differentiation involves even greater enhancement of inflammatory responses than does obese fat differentiation.