Transcriptome of Engineered Hypertrophic Human Adipocytes

Adipocyte hypertrophy is a primary mode of weight gain and is implicated in metabolic syndrome. Study of hypertrophy is hindered by the transience of primary adipocytes and the failure of in vitro differentiation to recapitulate hypertrophy. We enabled in vitro hypertrophy by patterning preadipocytes under synthetic fibers to mimic native cytoarchitecture and extracellular matrix. These raw data were obtained by sequencing mRNA from adipocyte populations grown to different sizes on the platform. We observed that hypertrophy elicited transcriptomic changes that increased overall similarity with primary tissue. Altogether, this work addresses questions with direct relevance to cell growth and maturation, obesity, and diabetes.