Mammary alveolar epithelial cells convert to brown adipocytes in post-lactating mice.
Antonio GiordanoJessica PeruginiDavid M KristensenLoris SartiniAndrea FrontiniShingo KajimuraKarsten KristiansenSaverio CintiPublished in: Journal of cellular physiology (2017)
During pregnancy and lactation, subcutaneous white adipocytes in the mouse mammary gland transdifferentiate reversibly to milk-secreting epithelial cells. In this study, we demonstrate by transmission electron microscopy that in the post-lactating mammary gland interscapular multilocular adipocytes found close to the mammary alveoli contain milk protein granules. Use of the Cre-loxP recombination system allowed showing that the involuting mammary gland of whey acidic protein-Cre/R26R mice, whose secretory alveolar cells express the lacZ gene during pregnancy, contains some X-Gal-stained and uncoupling protein 1-positive interscapular multilocular adipocytes. These data suggest that during mammary gland involution some milk-secreting epithelial cells in the anterior subcutaneous depot may transdifferentiate to brown adipocytes, highlighting a hitherto unappreciated feature of mouse adipose organ plasticity.
Keyphrases
- adipose tissue
- high fat diet induced
- insulin resistance
- dairy cows
- machine learning
- induced apoptosis
- amino acid
- dna damage
- electron microscopy
- binding protein
- heat stress
- big data
- metabolic syndrome
- oxidative stress
- deep learning
- gene expression
- signaling pathway
- cell death
- human milk
- transcription factor
- artificial intelligence
- dna methylation
- small molecule
- endoplasmic reticulum stress