Adipose derived stem cells (ASCs) methylation differences between lean and obese individuals

Pathological expansion of adipose tissue (AT) in obesity is supported by adipocyte precursors, termed adipose-derived stromal/stem cells (ASCs). Elucidation of mechanisms underlying ASC function may lead to therapeutic interventions to treat fat mass accumulation. Using epigenome-wide association studies, we explored the impact of obesity on the methylation signature of human ASCs. Genomic DNA was extracted from cells using the NucleoSpin® Tissue Kit (Macherery-Nagal GmbH). DNA methylation profiles were generated on the Infinium Human-Methylation450K BeadChip (Illumina). The BeadChip was developed to assay more than 480,000 CpG sites and selected CpG loci in parallel. DNA methylation data were processed using GenomeStudio software (Illumina) by applying the default settings.