Preadipocyte Conversion to Macrophage
EVIDENCE OF PLASTICITY*
- Guillaume Charrière‡§,
- Béatrice Cousin‡,
- Emmanuelle Arnaud‡,
- Mireille André‡,
- Francis Bacou¶,
- Luc Pénicaud‡ and
- Louis Casteilla‡‖
- From the ‡Unité Mixte de Recherche 5018 Université Paul Sabatier CNRS, IFR31, Bat L1, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Rangueil, 31403 Toulouse, France and the¶Unité Mixte de Recherche 866 Différenciation Cellulaire et Croissance, INRA, 34060 Montpellier Cedex 01, France
Abstract
Preadipocytes are present throughout adult life in adipose tissues and can proliferate and differentiate into mature adipocytes according to the energy balance. An increasing number of reports demonstrate that cells from adipose lineages (preadipocytes and adipocytes) and macrophages share numerous functional or antigenic properties. No large scale comparison reflecting the phenotype complexity has been performed between these different cell types until now. We used profiling analysis to define the common features shared by preadipocyte, adipocyte, and macrophage populations. Our analysis showed that the preadipocyte profile is surprisingly closer to the macrophage than to the adipocyte profile. From these data, we hypothesized that in a macrophage environment preadipocytes could effectively be converted into macrophages. We injected labeled stroma-vascular cells isolated from mouse white adipose tissue or 3T3-L1 preadipocyte cell line into the peritoneal cavity of nude mice and investigated changes in their phenotype. Preadipocytes rapidly and massively acquired high phagocytic activity and index. 60–70% of preadipocytes also expressed five macrophage-specific antigens: F4/80, Mac-1, CD80, CD86, and CD45. These values were similar to those observed for peritoneal macrophages.In vitro experiments showed that cell-to-cell contact between preadipocytes and peritoneal macrophages partially induced this preadipocyte phenotype conversion. Overall, these results suggest that preadipocyte and macrophage phenotypes are very similar and that preadipocytes have the potential to be very efficiently and rapidly converted into macrophages. This work emphasizes the great cellular plasticity of adipose precursors and reinforces the link between adipose tissue and innate immunity processes.
Footnotes
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↵* This work was supported by Grant 4CS01F from Génopôle Toulouse and Association Française contre les Myopathies/INSERM.The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
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↵§ Recipient of a fellowship from the Ministry of National Education, Research and Technology.
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↵‖ To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: 33-5-62-17-08-91; Fax: 33-5-62-17-09-05; E-mail: casteil@toulouse.inserm.fr.
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Published, JBC Papers in Press, January 7, 2003, DOI 10.1074/jbc.M210811200
- Abbreviations:
- SVF
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stroma-vascular fraction
- DAPI
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4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole
- PBS
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phosphate-buffered saline
- DMEM
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Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium
- NCS
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newborn calf serum
- GFP
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green fluorescent protein
- CMV
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cytomegalovirus
- FITC
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fluorescein isothiocyanate
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- Received October 23, 2002.
- Revision received December 10, 2002.
- The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.
