Towards a consensus atlas of human and mouse adipose tissue at single-cell resolution

Anne Loft¹, Margo P Emont², Ada Weinstock³, Adeline Divoux⁴, Adhideb Ghosh⁵, Allon Wagner^{6

7

8}, Ann V Hertzel⁹, Babukrishna Maniyadath¹⁰, Bart Deplancke¹¹, Boxiang Liu^{12

13

14

15

16

17}, Camilla Scheele¹⁸, Carey Lumeng¹⁹, Changhai Ding^{20

21}, Chenkai Ma²², Christian Wolfrum⁵, Clarissa Strieder-Barboza^{23

24}, Congru Li²⁵, Danh D Truong²⁶, David A Bernlohr⁹, Elisabet Stener-Victorin²⁵, Erin E Kershaw²⁷, Esti Yeger-Lotem²⁸, Farnaz Shamsi^{29

30}, Hannah X Hui³¹, Henrique Camara³², Jiawei Zhong³³, Joanna Kalucka^{34

35}, Joseph A Ludwig²⁶, Julie A Semon³⁶, Jutta Jalkanen³³, Katie L Whytock⁴, Kyle D Dumont³⁷, Lauren M Sparks⁴, Lindsey A Muir³⁸, Lingzhao Fang³⁹, Lucas Massier⁴⁰, Luis R Saraiva^{41

42

43}, Marc D Beyer^{44

45}, Marc G Jeschke⁴⁶, Marcelo A Mori^{47

48}, Mariana Boroni⁴⁹, Martin J Walsh⁵⁰, Mary-Elizabeth Patti³², Matthew D Lynes⁵¹, Matthias Blüher^{40

52}, Mikael Rydén^{53

54}, Natnael Hamda⁵⁵, Nicole L Solimini⁵⁶, Niklas Mejhert^{53

54}, Peng Gao⁵⁷, Rana K Gupta⁵⁸, Rinki Murphy⁵⁹, Saeed Pirouzpanah⁶⁰, Silvia Corvera⁶¹, Su'an Tang⁶², Swapan K Das⁶³, Søren F Schmidt¹⁰, Tao Zhang⁶⁴, Theodore M Nelson⁶⁵, Timothy E O'Sullivan⁶⁶, Vissarion Efthymiou^{5

32}, Wenjing Wang¹², Yihan Tong¹², Yu-Hua Tseng³², Susanne Mandrup⁶⁷, Evan D Rosen⁶⁸

Affiliations

¹ Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark. anlo@bmb.sdu.dk.
² Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. margo@uchicago.edu.
³ Department of Medicine, Section of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁴ Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, Orlando, FL, USA.
⁵ Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, ETH Zurich, Schwerzenbach, Switzerland.
⁶ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁷ Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁸ Center for Computational Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism, The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
¹⁰ Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark.
¹¹ Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics, Institute of Bioengineering, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
¹² Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹³ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁴ Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁵ Precision Medicine Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁶ Cardiovascular-Metabolic Disease Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁷ NUS Centre for Cancer Research, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁸ Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁹ Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
²⁰ Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
²¹ Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
²² Human Health, Health and Biosecurity, CSIRO, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
²³ Department of Veterinary Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.
²⁴ School of Veterinary Medicine, Texas Tech University, Amarillo, TX, USA.
²⁵ Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
²⁶ Department of Sarcoma Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
²⁷ Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
²⁸ Department of Clinical Biochemistry and Pharmacology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
²⁹ Department of Molecular Pathobiology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
³⁰ Departments of Cell Biology and Medicine, Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
³¹ School of Biomedical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³² Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism, Research Division, Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
³³ Department of Medicine Huddinge (H7), Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Huddinge, Sweden.
³⁴ Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
³⁵ Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark.
³⁶ Department of Biological Sciences, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA.
³⁷ Molecular and Cellular Exercise Physiology, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
³⁸ Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
³⁹ Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁴⁰ Helmholtz Institute for Metabolic, Obesity and Vascular Research (HI-MAG) of the Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University of Leipzig and University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
⁴¹ Sidra Medicine, Doha, Qatar.
⁴² Department of Comparative Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁴³ College of Health and Life Sciences, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar.
⁴⁴ Immunogenomics and Neurodegeneration, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Bonn, Germany.
⁴⁵ Platform for Single Cell Genomics and Epigenomics (PRECISE), German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and University of Bonn and West German Genome Center (WGGC), Bonn, Germany.
⁴⁶ Centre for Burn Research, Hamilton Health Sciences Centre, Department of Surgery and Department of Biochemistry, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
⁴⁷ Department of Biochemistry and Tissue Biology, Institute of Biology, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil.
⁴⁸ Obesity and Comorbidities Research Center (OCRC), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil.
⁴⁹ Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Division of Experimental and Translational Research, Brazilian National Cancer Institute (INCA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
⁵⁰ Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
⁵¹ MaineHealth Institute for Research, Scarborough, ME, USA.
⁵² Department of Medicine - Endocrinology, Nephrology, Rheumatology, University of Leipzig Medical Center, Leipzig, Germany.
⁵³ Department of Medicine (H7), Karolinska Institutet, C2-94, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁵⁴ Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Herlev, Denmark.
⁵⁵ Astellas Pharma, Northbrook, IL, USA.
⁵⁶ Department of Medical Oncology, Sarcoma Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵⁷ Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵⁸ Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, and Duke Molecular Physiology Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
⁵⁹ Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁶⁰ Molecular Medicine Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
⁶¹ University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA.
⁶² Department of Spinal Surgery, Orthopedic Medical Center, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
⁶³ Department of Internal Medicine, Section on Endocrinology and Metabolism, Medical Center Boulevard, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
⁶⁴ Substrate Metabolism Laboratory, School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
⁶⁵ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA.
⁶⁶ Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶⁷ Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark. s.mandrup@bmb.sdu.dk.
⁶⁸ Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. erosen@bidmc.harvard.edu.

PMID: 40360756
DOI: 10.1038/s42255-025-01296-9

Review

Towards a consensus atlas of human and mouse adipose tissue at single-cell resolution

Anne Loft et al. Nat Metab. 2025 May.

. 2025 May;7(5):875-894.

doi: 10.1038/s42255-025-01296-9. Epub 2025 May 13.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark. anlo@bmb.sdu.dk.
² Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. margo@uchicago.edu.
³ Department of Medicine, Section of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁴ Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, Orlando, FL, USA.
⁵ Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, ETH Zurich, Schwerzenbach, Switzerland.
⁶ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁷ Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁸ Center for Computational Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism, The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
¹⁰ Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark.
¹¹ Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics, Institute of Bioengineering, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
¹² Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹³ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁴ Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁵ Precision Medicine Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁶ Cardiovascular-Metabolic Disease Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁷ NUS Centre for Cancer Research, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
¹⁸ Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁹ Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
²⁰ Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
²¹ Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
²² Human Health, Health and Biosecurity, CSIRO, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
²³ Department of Veterinary Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA.
²⁴ School of Veterinary Medicine, Texas Tech University, Amarillo, TX, USA.
²⁵ Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
²⁶ Department of Sarcoma Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
²⁷ Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
²⁸ Department of Clinical Biochemistry and Pharmacology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
²⁹ Department of Molecular Pathobiology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
³⁰ Departments of Cell Biology and Medicine, Grossman School of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
³¹ School of Biomedical Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³² Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism, Research Division, Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
³³ Department of Medicine Huddinge (H7), Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Huddinge, Sweden.
³⁴ Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
³⁵ Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark.
³⁶ Department of Biological Sciences, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA.
³⁷ Molecular and Cellular Exercise Physiology, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
³⁸ Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
³⁹ Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁴⁰ Helmholtz Institute for Metabolic, Obesity and Vascular Research (HI-MAG) of the Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University of Leipzig and University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
⁴¹ Sidra Medicine, Doha, Qatar.
⁴² Department of Comparative Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
⁴³ College of Health and Life Sciences, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar.
⁴⁴ Immunogenomics and Neurodegeneration, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Bonn, Germany.
⁴⁵ Platform for Single Cell Genomics and Epigenomics (PRECISE), German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and University of Bonn and West German Genome Center (WGGC), Bonn, Germany.
⁴⁶ Centre for Burn Research, Hamilton Health Sciences Centre, Department of Surgery and Department of Biochemistry, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
⁴⁷ Department of Biochemistry and Tissue Biology, Institute of Biology, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil.
⁴⁸ Obesity and Comorbidities Research Center (OCRC), Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil.
⁴⁹ Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Division of Experimental and Translational Research, Brazilian National Cancer Institute (INCA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
⁵⁰ Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
⁵¹ MaineHealth Institute for Research, Scarborough, ME, USA.
⁵² Department of Medicine - Endocrinology, Nephrology, Rheumatology, University of Leipzig Medical Center, Leipzig, Germany.
⁵³ Department of Medicine (H7), Karolinska Institutet, C2-94, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁵⁴ Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Herlev, Denmark.
⁵⁵ Astellas Pharma, Northbrook, IL, USA.
⁵⁶ Department of Medical Oncology, Sarcoma Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵⁷ Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
⁵⁸ Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, and Duke Molecular Physiology Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
⁵⁹ Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁶⁰ Molecular Medicine Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
⁶¹ University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA.
⁶² Department of Spinal Surgery, Orthopedic Medical Center, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
⁶³ Department of Internal Medicine, Section on Endocrinology and Metabolism, Medical Center Boulevard, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
⁶⁴ Substrate Metabolism Laboratory, School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
⁶⁵ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA.
⁶⁶ Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁶⁷ Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity (ATLAS), Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Odense, Denmark. s.mandrup@bmb.sdu.dk.
⁶⁸ Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA. erosen@bidmc.harvard.edu.

PMID: 40360756
DOI: 10.1038/s42255-025-01296-9

Abstract

Adipose tissue (AT) is a complex connective tissue with a high relative proportion of adipocytes, which are specialized cells with the ability to store lipids in large droplets. AT is found in multiple discrete depots throughout the body, where it serves as the primary repository for excess calories. In addition, AT has an important role in functions as diverse as insulation, immunity and regulation of metabolic homeostasis. The Human Cell Atlas Adipose Bionetwork was established to support the generation of single-cell atlases of human AT as well as the development of unified approaches and consensus for cell annotation. Here, we provide a first roadmap from this bionetwork, including our suggested cell annotations for humans and mice, with the aim of describing the state of the field and providing guidelines for the production, analysis, interpretation and presentation of AT single-cell data.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: M.B. received honoraria as a consultant and speaker from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Novartis and Sanofi.

References

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Towards a consensus atlas of human and mouse adipose tissue at single-cell resolution

Affiliations

Towards a consensus atlas of human and mouse adipose tissue at single-cell resolution

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Conflict of interest statement

References

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources