Spatial Metabolomics Reveals the Effects of Dietary Capsaicin Intervention on Interscapular Adipose Tissue Metabolome in Mice

Capsaicin is a polyphenol with a well-known anti-obesity potential, which could activate brown adipose tissue and promote the browning of white adipose tissue. Indeed, conventional proteomics have been used to investigate the browning effects of capsaicin on adipose tissue. However, the existence of a layer of white adipose tissue above the interscapular brown adipose tissue poses a great challenge to obtain intact interscapular brown adipose tissue without including adjacent white adipose tissue. Therefore, the traditional method normally focuses on changes occurring in the bottom layer of interscapular brown adipose tissue. Spatial metabolomics is an omics method that enables the analysis of metabolite distributions in tissue sections. Therefore, in the current study, spatial metabolomics was utilized to investigate the effects of dietary capsaicin intervention on interscapular brown adipose tissue and adjacent white adipose tissue. The results indicated several noteworthy findings that capsaicin treatment may induce similar metabolite alterations across various regions of brown adipose tissue irrespective of their proximity to WAT, while it also markedly influences the metabolites in the adjacent white adipose tissue. A KEGG pathway analysis further revealed these changes were associated with key characteristics of beige energy metabolism pathways, such as thermogenesis, glycerol phospholipid metabolism, and pentose phosphate pathway. Taken together, this study may supplement useful details to understand the mechanisms of capsaicin enhancing BAT activity and promoting WAT browning.