Adipocyte hypertrophy associates with differential in vivo postprandial fatty acid metabolism, adipose single-cell landscape and transcriptional dynamics

We employed a combination of oral and i.v. tracers with positron emission tomography imaging to measure systemic and organ-specific fatty acid metabolism in 40 men and women with normal or impaired glucose tolerance (NCT02808182), and single nuclei RNA-sequencing to perform an unbiased comparison of cellular heterogeneity and transcriptional dynamics of all subcutaneous AT cell types between individuals with AT hypertrophy vs. hyperplasia matched for the same sex, ethnicity, glucose-tolerance status, BMI, total and percent body fat, and waist circumference. Overall design: We have also used single-nuclei RNA sequencing of frozen human subcutaneous AT with adipocyte hypertrophy and hyperplasia in order to perform an unbiased assessment of the single-cell landscape of all AT cell types, including mature adipocytes.