Unbiased lineage tracing across the adipose organ decouples developmental origin from anatomical and transcriptomic identities

In mice, unbiased in utero CRISPR barcoding reveals that interscapular brown fat is the most developmentally isolated brown depot, despite shared Myf5/Pax3 marker usage.

• Why it matters: Developmental origin and adult adipose depot function are unclear, and single-marker lineage tracing may mislead when lineage and anatomical identity diverge.
• What they did: The team used in utero CRISPR-mediated barcoding lineage tracing to build an unbiased clonal map of adipose organ development in mice.
• The result: They find that Myf5/Pax3-marked depots do not cluster, mesenteric white fat shares high clonal ancestry with brown fats despite a divergent transcriptome, and subcutaneous white depots converge transcriptomically despite distant origins.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.