Transcriptional profiling of Regulatory T (Treg) cells in obesity

We reported transcriptional characterization of vTreg53 TCR transgenic Treg cells from splenic and visceral adipose tissue (VAT) in mice fed with normal chow diet (NCD) or high fat diet (HFD) for different durations. We also reported transcriptional profile of VAT Treg cells stimulated by IFNa in vitro. Through this analysis, we found that the reduction of VAT Treg cells during obesity is driven by increased production of IFNa in VAT. For the HFD dataset, 12-week-old vTreg53 TCR tg mice were fed with NCD or HFD for 2, 4, 8, or 16 weeks. The clonotype+ Tregs from the spleen and VAT of recipient mice were double sorted and processed for RNA-seq. For the in vitro dataset, 8-10-week-old PPARγ-tdT Foxp3-GFP mice were injected with two doses of IL-33 in a week to expand VAT-Treg cells, and PPARγ(tdT)+ VAT-Treg cells were sorted and cultured in the presence of 10ng/ml IL-33, 2000U/ml IL-2, with or without 50ng/ml IFNa for 3 days. Foxp3/GFP+ Treg cells were sorted and processed for RNA-Seq.