Volume 33, Issue 5 pp. 936-948
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Optimized RNA sequencing deconvolution illustrates the impact of obesity and weight loss on cell composition of human adipose tissue

Cheehoon Ahn

Cheehoon Ahn

Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, Orlando, Florida, USA

Search for more papers by this author
Adeline Divoux

Adeline Divoux

Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, Orlando, Florida, USA

Search for more papers by this author
Mingqi Zhou

Mingqi Zhou

Department of Biological Chemistry and Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism, University of California, Irvine, California, USA

Search for more papers by this author
Marcus M. Seldin

Marcus M. Seldin

Department of Biological Chemistry and Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism, University of California, Irvine, California, USA

Search for more papers by this author
Lauren M. Sparks

Corresponding Author

Lauren M. Sparks

Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, Orlando, Florida, USA

Correspondence

Lauren M. Sparks and Katie L. Whytock, Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, 301 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32804, USA.

Email: [email protected] and [email protected]

Search for more papers by this author
Katie L. Whytock

Corresponding Author

Katie L. Whytock

Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, Orlando, Florida, USA

Correspondence

Lauren M. Sparks and Katie L. Whytock, Translational Research Institute, AdventHealth, 301 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL 32804, USA.

Email: [email protected] and [email protected]

Search for more papers by this author
First published: 02 April 2025

Lauren M. Sparks is the senior author.

Abstract

Objective

Cellular heterogeneity of human adipose tissue is linked to the pathophysiology of obesity and may impact the response to energy restriction and changes in fat mass. Herein, we provide an optimized pipeline to estimate cellular composition in human abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue (ASAT) bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) datasets using a single-nuclei RNA-seq signature matrix.

Methods

A deconvolution pipeline for ASAT was optimized by benchmarking publicly available algorithms using a signature matrix derived from ASAT single-nuclei RNA-seq data from 20 adults and then applied to estimate ASAT cell-type proportions in publicly available obesity and weight loss studies.

Results

Individuals with obesity had greater proportions of macrophages and lower proportions of adipocyte subpopulations and vascular cells compared with lean individuals. Two months of diet-induced weight loss increased the estimated proportions of macrophages; however, 2 years of diet-induced weight loss reduced the estimated proportions of macrophages, thereby suggesting a biphasic nature of cellular remodeling of ASAT during weight loss.

Conclusions

Our optimized high-throughput pipeline facilitates the assessment of composition changes of highly characterized cell types in large numbers of ASAT samples using low-cost bulk RNA-seq. Our data reveal novel changes in cellular heterogeneity and its association with cardiometabolic health in humans with obesity and following weight loss.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Gene signature matrices and 6000 HVG list have been uploaded to the following link: https://github.com/KWhytock13/deconvolution-wat. Code for generating source data and running the deconvolution pipeline is also available at the following link: https://github.com/KWhytock13/deconvolution-wat

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.