De Novo Reconstruction of Adipose Tissue Transcriptomes Reveals Long Non-coding RNA Regulators of Brown Adipocyte Development

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) protects against obesity by promoting energy expenditure via uncoupled respiration. To uncover BAT-specific long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), we used RNA-seq to reconstruct de novo transcriptomes of mouse brown, inguinal white, and epididymal white fat and identified ∼1,500...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bai, Zhiqiang, Xu, Dan, Yuan, Bingbing, Lo, Kinyui Alice, Yoon, Myeong Jin, Lim, Yen Ching, Knoll, Marko, Chen, Shuai, Chen, Peng, Sun, Lei, Alvarez, Juan Rene, Slavov, Nikolai G, Lodish, Harvey F
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Elsevier 2016
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105804
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2035-1820
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7029-7415
Description
Summary:Brown adipose tissue (BAT) protects against obesity by promoting energy expenditure via uncoupled respiration. To uncover BAT-specific long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), we used RNA-seq to reconstruct de novo transcriptomes of mouse brown, inguinal white, and epididymal white fat and identified ∼1,500 lncRNAs, including 127 BAT-restricted loci induced during differentiation and often targeted by key regulators PPARγ, C/EBPα, and C/EBPβ. One of them, lnc-BATE1, is required for establishment and maintenance of BAT identity and thermogenic capacity. lnc-BATE1 inhibition impairs concurrent activation of brown fat and repression of white fat genes and is partially rescued by exogenous lnc-BATE1 with mutated siRNA-targeting sites, demonstrating a function in trans. We show that lnc-BATE1 binds heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein U and that both are required for brown adipogenesis. Our work provides an annotated catalog for the study of fat depot-selective lncRNAs and establishes lnc-BATE1 as a regulator of BAT development and physiology.