Longitudinal expression profiles of key markers during stages of adipogenic differentiation of 3T3-L1 cells using the PPARG agonist rosiglitazone

The rising prevalence of obesity is a global health concern, beginning already early in life. Because of its capability to differentiate into adipocytes in vitro, the murine preadipocyte 3T3-L1 cell line is most commonly used to investigate the development of adipocytes. Previously, the classical differentiation protocol was optimized by adding the PPARG agonist rosiglitazone. However, longitudinal data on the expression dynamics of genes involved in adipocyte lipid metabolism in 3T3-L1 cells following rosiglitazone treatment are still lacking. Thus, our objective was to investigate the expression of lipid metabolism genes during both early and late stages of adipogenesis by inducing 3T3-L1 cell differentiation with rosiglitazone, thereby generating a comprehensive longitudinal dataset. Our data show changes in mRNA and/or protein expression of Pparg1, Pparg2, Cebpa, Acaca, Fasn, Cd36, Cidea, and Fabp4 during differentiation. Their expression increased starting on day 0 with Pparg1, Cebpa, Cd36 and Fabp4 reaching maximum expression on day 4 and Pparg2, Acaca, Fasn and Cidea on day 7 of differentiation. Due to the dynamics of their expression characteristics, we suggest them as a set of markers for early (Pparg1, Cebpa), late (Pparg2, Acaca), and global (Fasn, Cd36, Fabp4) stages of adipogenic differentiation. In conclusion, this longitudinal data on adipogenesis markers using a differentiation protocol including rosiglitazone aids choosing genes involved in and/or time points of adipogenic differentiation for future studies using rosiglitazone.