Comprehensive proteomic profiling of converted Adipocyte-like cells from normal human dermal fibroblast using Data-Independent Acquisition Mass Spectrometry (DIA-MS)

Adipocytes play an important role in the regulation of systemic energy homeostasis and are closely related to metabolic disorders such as type-2 diabetes and inflammatory bowel diseases. Particularly, there is an increasing need for a human adipocyte model for studying metabolic diseases and obesity study. However, utilizing human primary adipocyte culture and stem-cell based models presents several practical limitations due to their time-consuming nature, requirement for relatively intensive labor, and high cost. Here, we applied direct conversion of normal human dermal fibroblast (NHDF) into adipocyte-like cells using adipogenic cocktail containing IBMX, dexamethasone, insulin, and rosiglitazone and confirmed prominent lipid droplet accumulation in the converted cells. For profiling of the proteome changes in the converted cells, we conducted comprehensive quantitative proteome analysis in intracellular proteome fraction and extracellular proteome fraction. We observed several proteins, which are known to be highly expressed in adipocytes specifically, were dominantly increased in the converted cells. In this study, we suggest that NHDF can be converted into adipocyte-like cells by adiopogenic cocktail and can serve as a useful tool to address human adipocyte study and its metabolism study.