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Proteomic profiling of human omental and subcutaneous adipose tissue in individuals with a broad range of BMI
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  • Published: 05 March 2026

Proteomic profiling of human omental and subcutaneous adipose tissue in individuals with a broad range of BMI

  • Alex Zelter1 na1,
  • Yue Winnie Wen2 na1,
  • Michael Riffle  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1633-86071,
  • Lindsay C. Czuba2,3,
  • Aprajita S. Yadav2,
  • Jerry Zhu2,
  • Jessica M. Snyder4,
  • Aaron Maurais1,
  • Jeffrey LaFrance2,
  • Saurabh Khandelwal5,
  • Judy Y. Chen5,
  • Estell Williams5,
  • Zoe Parr5,
  • Daniel Kim5,
  • Katya B. Rubinow6,
  • Michael J. MacCoss  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1853-02561 &
  • …
  • Nina Isoherranen  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9548-31262 

Scientific Data , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

  • 940 Accesses

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Obesity
  • Translational research

Abstract

Obesity is a major public health challenge affecting an ever-increasing proportion of the global population. It is associated with numerous comorbidities. Progressive expansion and remodeling of adipose tissue may lead to depot specific changes in adipose tissue biology and energy partitioning. Such changes likely precede the development of obesity-related complications. To facilitate a deeper understanding of adipose tissue biology, a comprehensive quantitative proteomic dataset is presented at the peptide and protein level. Data-independent acquisition LC-MS/MS data were acquired from matched subcutaneous and omental adipose tissues from metabolically healthy individuals with no comorbidities and covering a wide range of body mass indexes. Adipose tissue samples were collected during elective surgeries and immediately processed for histology or frozen until proteomic analysis. Internal and external quality control systems ensured high quality data. All data presented are available via ProteomeXchange. This dataset will allow new insights into biological changes that evolve with increasing adiposity captured before the onset of comorbidities. Matched sampling across fat depots provides an opportunity to uncover depot-specific physiological signatures.

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Data availability

All data presented in the current work are available on Panorama Public30 (https://panoramaweb.org/human-adipose.url) and were assigned the ProteomeXchange39 ID: PXD067514 (https://doi.org/10.6069/sq0n-1x32)40.

Code availability

MSConvert is available from https://proteowizard.sourceforge.io/. DIA-NN is available from https://github.com/vdemichev/DiaNN. Carafe is available from: https://github.com/Noble-Lab/Carafe. EncyclopeDIA is available from https://bitbucket.org/searleb/encyclopedia/. Skyline is available from https://skyline.ms/skyline.url. All Nextflow workflows used in the current work to generate spectral libraries, search, quantify and normalize the MS data presented here are publicly available at: https://nf-carafe-ai-ms.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, for generation of spectral libraries using Carafe and DIA-NN; https://nf-teirex-dia.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, for generation of on-column chromatogram libraries followed by quantification using EncyclopeDIA and Skyline; https://github.com/uw-maccosslab/nf-dia-batch-correction, for peptide and protein level normalization. All in house code written for the analysis of the data presented in this work is available online at https://github.com/Isoherranen-Lab/Human-Adipose-Depot-DIA.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Grants R01GM111772, R01DK143511, T32DK007247, T32GM007750, TL1TR002318, R24GM141156, U01DK137097 and R01DK143511, as well as by the University of Washington’s Proteomics Resource (UWPR95794). We thank the research participants for their altruism and the nursing staff at the UW general surgery clinic for their assistance. We thank the UW Histology and Imaging Core for technical expertise with histology and immunohistochemistry.

Author information

Author notes
  1. These authors contributed equally: Alex Zelter, Yue Winnie Wen.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genome Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Alex Zelter, Michael Riffle, Aaron Maurais & Michael J. MacCoss

  2. Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmacy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Yue Winnie Wen, Lindsay C. Czuba, Aprajita S. Yadav, Jerry Zhu, Jeffrey LaFrance & Nina Isoherranen

  3. Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Collage of Pharmacy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Lindsay C. Czuba

  4. Department of Comparative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Jessica M. Snyder

  5. Division of General Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Saurabh Khandelwal, Judy Y. Chen, Estell Williams, Zoe Parr & Daniel Kim

  6. Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Nutrition, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Katya B. Rubinow

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Contributions

K.B.R. and N.I. conceived the experiments. A.Z., M.J.M., J.S. and N.I. designed experiments. K.B.R. and L.C.C. identified and consented participants. S.K., J.Y.C., E.W., Z.P. and D.K. performed surgical biopsies. J.L. and L.C.C. performed initial tissue processing. J.M.S., J.Z. and A.S.Y. performed adipose tissue pathology and cell counting. A.Z. performed proteomic sample preparation, mass spectrometry and data analysis. A.M. and M.R. contributed new analytical tools to perform proteomics data analysis. Y.W.W. performed the statistical analysis of proteomic data with help from M.R. The manuscript was written by A.Z., Y.W.W. and N.I. with contributions from all authors. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nina Isoherranen.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

N.I. has consultancy agreements with Merck and Boehringer-Ingelheim. The MacCoss Lab at the University of Washington has a sponsored research agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific, the manufacturer of the instrumentation used in this research. M.J.M. is a paid consultant for Thermo Fisher Scientific. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1 (download XLSX )

Supplementary Table 2 (download XLSX )

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Zelter, A., Wen, Y.W., Riffle, M. et al. Proteomic profiling of human omental and subcutaneous adipose tissue in individuals with a broad range of BMI. Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06948-3

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  • Received: 10 September 2025

  • Accepted: 20 February 2026

  • Published: 05 March 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06948-3

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