JoVE | Peer Reviewed Scientific Video Journal

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

State-of-the-art Methods to Study Adipocytes and Adipose Tissue

Guest Editors

Jerome Gilleron

Université Côte d'Azur, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine (C3M), Nice, France

Dr. Jerome Gilleron earned his PhD on “cell signaling, endocrinology, and reproduction” from the University of Paris Sud in 2008 (France). Afterward, he discovered the world of endocytosis performing his post-doctoral fellow in the Lab of Pr. Marino Zerial in the Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden (Germany). Since 2012, Dr. Gilleron joined the team directed by Drs. Jean-Francois Tanti and Mireille Cormont at the Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine in Nice (France) to apply his cell biologist skills onto metabolism-related pathologies. His research focuses on the implication of the endocytic regulators, such as the Rab protein family, on metabolic function and dysfunction. During his career, Dr. Gilleron developed and/or adapted novel technologies to perform his research. Recently, he adapted tissue clarification to explore adipose tissue structure and developed mathematical modeling approaches to understand how adipose tissue is build-up.

Jennifer Jager

Université Côte d'Azur, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine (C3M), Nice, France

Dr. Jennifer Jager received her PhD in Biology from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France) in 2009, where she studied the contribution of the MAPK ERK pathway to obesity-induced adipose tissue inflammation and insulin resistance.  She conducted her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Mitchell Lazar at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), where she developed technologies such as Global Run-On Sequencing (GRO-seq) to study the nuclear receptor Rev-erbα and mechanisms by which it regulates gene transcription to control circadian and metabolic physiology in vivo in different tissues, including in adipose tissue. Then, she joined the team of Dr. Myriam Aouadi at the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) to investigate the role of immune cells in metabolic tissues during obesity and the development of insulin resistance. Since 2018, she is a Principal Investigator at the Mediterranean Center for Molecular Medicine at the University of Côte d’Azur (France), in the team directed by Drs. Jean-François Tanti and Mireille Cormont. Her research focuses on the transcriptional regulation of macrophages and adipocytes metabolism and their interaction within adipose tissue during obesity.

Collection Overview

Obesity has become a major worldwide public health issue, dramatically increasing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver diseases. Obesity is characterized by an increase in adipose tissue (AT) mass, as well as a tremendous remodeling of AT immune cells from anti-inflammatory toward pro-inflammatory status. It is now clear that the maximal capacity of AT to expand during obesity is a key factor in the development of obesity-associated pathologies: AT expansion is an important homeostatic mechanism to cope with the excess of energy and to avoid deleterious lipid spill over in other metabolic organs such as muscles and the liver. Understanding (during obesity) (1) how AT expand; (2) which are the structural and cellular remodeling that leads to the failure in AT expansion; and (3) how these defects can be corrected are fundamental questions that must be resolved in order to pave the way for therapeutic approaches. Recently, several elegant methods were developed both in vitro and in vivo to determine the molecular mechanisms that tune adipogenesis, adipocyte growth and function, AT development and AT cellular remodeling. This methods collection aims to coalesce these various innovative techniques and tools in order to explore AT in physiological and pathological conditions, and ultimately bring our understanding of this tissue and its important pathological complications to a clinical level.