Why the study?
Distinguishing progenitor cells from other cell types and placing them in an epistatic pathway is challenging, particularly in the adipocyte lineage where the adipose tissue stromal vascular fraction contains heterogeneous cell populations.
Identified a novel pro-preadipocyte population in adipose tissue using scRNA-seq, providing insights into the physiological mechanisms regulating adipogenesis.
Elucidating the transitional stages that define the pathway stem cells progress through during differentiation advances our understanding of biology and fosters the identification of therapeutic opportunities. However, distinguishing progenitor cells from other cell types and placing them in an epistatic pathway is challenging. This is exemplified in the adipocyte lineage, where the stromal vascular fraction (SVF) from adipose tissue is enriched for progenitor cells but also contains heterogeneous populations of cells. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has begun to facilitate the deconvolution of cell types in the SVF, and a hierarchical structure is emerging. Here, we use scRNA-seq to discover a population of CD31 − CD45 − cells in the SVF that are distinguished by a specific expression profile. Further, we place this population on an epistatic pathway upstream of the previously defined preadipocyte population. Finally, we discover functional properties of this population with broad implications, including revealing physiological mechanisms that regulate adipogenesis.
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Chen et al. (2023) studied this question.
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