Ruidan Xue

TL;DR: This study isolated anatomically defined neck fat from adult human volunteers and compared its gene expression, differentiation capacity and basal oxygen consumption to different mouse adipose depots, suggesting that activation of human BAT could be used as a safe treatment for obesity and metabolic dysregulation.

TL;DR: This study isolated clonally derived adipocytes from stromal vascular fractions of adult human BAT from two individuals and globally analyzed their molecular signatures and found that KCNK3 and MTUS1 were required for beige adipocyte differentiation and thermogenic function.

TL;DR: Evidence is provided for a systemically active regulatory mechanism that controls whole-body BAT activity for thermoregulation and energy homeostasis, and an important physiological cross-talk between constitutive and recruitable brown fat cells is suggested.

TL;DR: Interferon regulatory factor 4 is identified as a dominant transcriptional effector of thermogenesis and induced by cold and cAMP in adipocytes and is sufficient to promote increased thermogenic gene expression, energy expenditure, and cold tolerance.

TL;DR: This work generated clones of brown and white preadipocytes from human neck fat and characterized their adipogenic and thermogenic differentiation, and combined an uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) reporter system and expression profiling to define novel sets of gene signatures in human preadIPocytes that could predict the thermogenic potential of the cells once they were maturated.