Yanbei Zhu, Rongze Yang, John McLenithan, Daozhan Yu, Hong Wang, Yaping Wang, Devinder Singh, John Olson, Carole Sztalryd, Dalong Zhu, Da-Wei Gong

To determine whether super-activation of PPARγ can reprogram human myoblasts into brown-like adipocytes and to establish a new cell model for browning research. To enhance the PPARγ signaling, M3, the transactivation domain of MyoD, was fused to PPARγ. PPARγ and M3-PPARγ-lentiviral vectors were used to convert human myoblasts into adipocytes. Brown adipocyte markers of the reprogrammed adipocytes were assessed by qPCR and protein analyses. White adipocytes differentiated from subcutaneous stromal vascular cells and perithyroid brown fat tissues were used as references. In transient transfections, M3-PPARγ had a stronger constitutive activity than PPARγ by reporter assay. Although the transduction of either PPARγ or M3-PPARγ induced adipogenesis in myoblasts, M3-PPARγ drastically induced the brown adipocyte markers of UCP1, CIDEA, and PRDM16 by 1,050, 2.4, and 5.0 fold, respectively and increased mitochondria contents by 4 fold, compared to PPARγ. Super-activation of PPARγ can effectively convert human myoblasts into brown-like adipocytes and a new approach to derive brown-like adipocytes.