Dermal Adipose Tissue Has High Plasticity and Undergoes Reversible Dedifferentiation in Mice

Overview

Journal J Clin Invest

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2019 Sep 11

PMID 31503545

Citations 92

Authors

Zhuzhen Zhang

Mengle Shao

Chelsea Hepler

Zhenzhen Zi

Shangang Zhao

Yu A An

Yi Zhu

Alexandra L Ghaben

May-Yun Wang

Na Li

Toshiharu Onodera

Nolwenn Joffin

Clair Crewe

Qingzhang Zhu

Lavanya Vishvanath

Ashwani Kumar

Chao Xing

Qiong A Wang

Laurent Gautron

Yingfeng Deng

Ruth Gordillo

Ilja Kruglikov

Christine M Kusminski

Rana K Gupta

Philipp E Scherer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Dermal adipose tissue (also known as dermal white adipose tissue and herein referred to as dWAT) has been the focus of much discussion in recent years. However, dWAT remains poorly characterized. The fate of the mature dermal adipocytes and the origin of the rapidly reappearing dermal adipocytes at different stages remain unclear. Here, we isolated dermal adipocytes and characterized dermal fat at the cellular and molecular level. Together with dWAT's dynamic responses to external stimuli, we established that dermal adipocytes are a distinct class of white adipocytes with high plasticity. By combining pulse-chase lineage tracing and single-cell RNA sequencing, we observed that mature dermal adipocytes undergo dedifferentiation and redifferentiation under physiological and pathophysiological conditions. Upon various challenges, the dedifferentiated cells proliferate and redifferentiate into adipocytes. In addition, manipulation of dWAT highlighted an important role for mature dermal adipocytes for hair cycling and wound healing. Altogether, these observations unravel a surprising plasticity of dermal adipocytes and provide an explanation for the dynamic changes in dWAT mass that occur under physiological and pathophysiological conditions, and highlight the important contributions of dWAT toward maintaining skin homeostasis.

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