Wnt Signaling Preserves Progenitor Cell Multipotency During Adipose Tissue Development

Overview

Journal Nat Metab

Publisher Springer Nature

Specialty Endocrinology

Date 2023 Jun 19

PMID 37337125

Authors

Zinger Yang Loureiro

Shannon Joyce

Tiffany DeSouza

Javier Solivan-Rivera

Anand Desai

Pantos Skritakis

Qin Yang

Rachel Ziegler

Denise Zhong

Tammy T Nguyen

Ormond A MacDougald

Silvia Corvera

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells are essential for tissue development and repair throughout life, but how they are maintained under chronic differentiation pressure is not known. Using single-cell transcriptomics of human progenitor cells we find that adipose differentiation stimuli elicit two cellular trajectories: one toward mature adipocytes and another toward a pool of non-differentiated cells that maintain progenitor characteristics. These cells are induced by transient Wnt pathway activation and express numerous extracellular matrix genes and are therefore named structural Wnt-regulated adipose tissue cells. We find that the genetic signature of structural Wnt-regulated adipose tissue cells is present in adult human adipose tissue and adipose tissue developed from human progenitor cells in mice. Our results suggest a mechanism whereby adipose differentiation occurs concurrently with the maintenance of a mesenchymal progenitor cell pool, ensuring tissue development, repair and appropriate metabolic control over the lifetime.

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