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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jul 20.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2012 Jul 12;150(2):366–376. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2012.05.016

Figure 1. Beige fat cells arise from a subset of preadipocytes in the subcutaneous adipose depot.

Figure 1

(A) Multilocular beige fat cells are prominent in the subcutaneous white adipose depot of 129SVE male mice at 7–9 weeks of age. Hematoxylin & Eosin stain show islets of multilocular fat cells within inguinal white fat depot (400X). (B) Total RNA was isolated from epididymal (Epi), inguinal (Ing) and interscapular (Bat) adipose tissues of 129SVE mice and assayed for mRNA expression for Ucp-1 and other brown fat-like genes by qPCR. Values are mean±SD (n=5). Expression levels of Ucp-1 and Cidea are undetected in epididymal depot. (C) Total RNA was isolated from fat cells differentiated from epididymal (Epi), inguinal (Ing) and interscapular (Bat) primary stromal vascular cells and assayed for mRNA expression for Ucp-1 and other brown fat-like genes by qPCR. Relative gene expression was normalized to adipsin mRNA levels. Values are mean±SD (n=3) (D) Cluster dendrogram of array expression data with RNA samples from differentiated cultures of 26 immortalized fat cell lines as described in text. Analysis details were described in the Supplemental Experimental Procedures. Height (y axis) is Euclidean distance. To mimic the sympathetic tone in vivo upon prolonged cold exposure when beige fat cells are functionally activated, we analyzed RNA from fully differentiated cells (day8), treated with 10 μM forskolin (FSK), a cAMP inducing agent, for 4 hrs.