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Brown adipocytes are embedded within an intricate network of blood vessels and sympathetic nerves that support their development and thermogenic function. This study shows that adipocyte progenitor cells control blood vessel growth and nerve wiring in brown fat during cold exposure. They do so by releasing Slit3, which is cleaved into fragments that coordinate angiogenesis and sympathetic innervation.

Increasing mitochondrial oxidative capacity and energy expenditure holds therapeutic potential for obesity and metabolic disorders. Here, the authors identify MTCH2 as a mitochondrial regulator of fatty acid oxidation via interaction with CPT1.

Activation of thermogenic adipocytes is a strategy to combat metabolic diseases. Here the authors report that GPR180 is a component of TGFβ signalling that promotes thermogenic adipocyte function and mediates the metabolic effects of the adipocyte-secreted factor CTHRC1, and contributes to the regulation of glucose and energy metabolism.

Brown adipose cells contribute to body temperature maintenance by converting lipids and glucose into heat, and can be found in white adipose tissue. Wolfrum and colleagues find a population of cells in white adipose tissue that can adopt brown or white characteristics in response to cold.

Here the authors show that genkwanin glycosides from Phaleria nisidai leaf extract improve glucose homeostasis by enhancing glucose uptake into adipose tissue, with effects comparable to metformin in a study with male mice with obesity and insulin resistance.

UCP1 is involved in regulating thermogenesis, and the Ucp1-Cre mouse line has been widely used for studying brown fat. Here they show that this mouse line carries an extra copy of the Ucp1 gene and displays unexpected changes in fat tissue function. Researchers should be cautious when interpreting studies using this model.

Here the authors report that brown adipocyte-derived vaspin reduces heat-producing activity in brown fat by blocking adrenergic signals, helping to regulate energy expenditure and maintain metabolic balance.

Korobkina et al. show that ACLY in brown fat prevents metabolic overload in the tricarboxylic acid cycle, thus ensuring adequate thermogenesis by avoiding cellular stress.

How heavy a person is and how much active brown fat they have depends on their father and the season in which they were conceived.

Brown fat in the body converts energy into heat. The discovery that inosine molecules are released from dying brown fat and induce heat production in nearby brown fat cells could point to a way of combating obesity.

Frei et al. show that a new tri-functional reagent identifies unknown cell-surface receptors bound by known ligands on living cells.

Some fat cells convert energy into heat, so targeting them to induce weight loss is appealing. The discovery that a subset of the cells burns glucose, rather than both glucose and lipids, could improve our ability to do just that.

Ding et al. find a mechanism coordinating fatty acid and glucose supply. Glucose-driven Golgi phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate levels impact the assembly of E3 ligase complex CUL7–FBXW8, controlling adipose triglyceride lipase levels and lipolysis.

Stable epigenetic changes indicate the existence of an obesogenic memory in mouse adipocytes that primes cells for pathological responses in an obesogenic environment and potentially contributes to the problematic ‘yo-yo’ effect often seen with dieting.

Brown adipose tissue is a promising target for the treatment of obesity with the potential to increase energy expenditure. Here, the authors use pharmacological and genetic approaches to block AXL receptor activation and show that its inhibition enhances brown adipocyte functionality and thermogenesis, leading to weight loss and metabolic improvements in mice.

Dong and Sun et al. show that adipogenesis regulatory cells in murine white adipose tissue inhibit adipogenesis through RSPO2, which regulates maturation of early progenitor cells via Lgr4.

Ding et al. report a mechanism that allows cells to sense cellular fatty acid levels and adjust lipolysis as needed, which involves peroxisomal degradation of fatty acids, production of reactive oxygen species and post-translational regulation of adipose triglyceride lipase.

Single-nucleus RNA sequencing in mouse and human adipose tissue identifies a subpopulation of adipocytes that regulates thermogenesis in neighbouring adipocytes in a paracrine manner by modulating acetate signalling.

The standard method for identifying active brown adipose tissue is costly and exposes patients to radiation. Here, the authors show that convolutional neural networks can predict [¹⁸F]-FDG uptake by BAT from unenhanced CT scans and improve the segmentation accuracy compared to conventional CT thresholding.

Single-cell studies of human white adipose tissue (WAT) provide insights into the specialized cell types in the tissue. Here the authors combine publicly available and newly generated high-resolution and bulk transcriptomic results from multiple human datasets to provide a comprehensive cellular map of white adipose tissue.

A creatine futile cycle has been shown to contribute to energy expenditure in beige adipocytes in preclinical mouse models of obesity. In this issue of Nature Metabolism, Connell and colleagues show that creatine supplementation in healthy young female vegetarians unfortunately affects neither human brown adipocyte activity nor cold-induced energy expenditure.

We have lost a distinguished biochemist who dedicated his career to the study of phosphatidylinositol signalling in metabolic regulation and to the advancement of lipidomics.

Gut microbiota deficient mice demonstrate enhanced glucose clearance, but which tissues are responsible for this improvement are still unclear. Here the authors report that brown adipose tissue contributes to the enhanced glucose clearance in gut microbiota depleted mice and that this response is dissociated from adaptive thermogenesis.

Asymmetrical cell division helps to maintain cellular heterogeneity in the T cell compartment. Here the authors examine the differential immune responses built by naive and virtual memory T cells from young and aged individuals, and explore the effect of mTOR inhibition on asymmetrical cell division and memory formation.

Adipose tissue (AT) inflammation is strongly associated with obesity and constitutes an obesogenic memory upon weight loss. Here, the authors show that intermittent fasting leads to an adipocyte p53-signaling dependent emergence of lipid-associated macrophages in visceral AT of obese mice which limits the systemic fasting response.

Fatty acids generated through lipolysis are constantly re-esterified into triglycerides in what is known as the glyceride–fatty acid futile cycle. A recent quantification of the activity of this futile cycle in adipocytes suggests that it may have manifold implications for systemic energy homeostasis.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) has high thermogenic potential and is considered a promising target to counteract obesity. Here de Jong et al. demonstrate that human BAT is more similar to classical brown than to beige adipose tissue from mice kept at thermoneutrality and challenged with a high-fat diet.

Understanding the regulatory mechanisms governing brown and beige adipose mediated thermogenesis is of interest in order to develop therapeutic strategies to treat obesity. Here, the authors show that adipocyte-expressed apoptosis signal-regulating kinase 1 (ASK1) inhibits browning in response to cold, β3 receptor activation, and LPS.

Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of progenitor cells from human adipose depots reveals an adipogenic and a structural branch of cells, the latter named SWAT cells and shown to display a multipotent phenotype.

By mapping the spatial organization of adipose tissue, Bäckdahl and colleagues identify adipocyte progenitor structures as well as three subclasses of adipocytes with different molecular functions, including insulin sensitivity and leptin signalling.

Cancer cachexia is marked by a pathological loss of fat tissue, but preventing the degradation of AMPK in this tissue helps preserve its mass in mouse models.

Laurila et al. extend findings from rodents to humans by demonstrating, in a clinical trial, that the gut hormone secretin, which is secreted in response to a meal, induces thermogenesis and satiation in healthy males.

The authors highlight inconsistencies and divergencies in the literature reporting data on indirect calorimetry for studies on whole-body energy homeostasis, and propose harmonization of standards to facilitate data comparison and interpretation across different datasets.

Although Krüppel-associated box zinc finger proteins (KZFPs) were found to mostly repress transposable elements, recent studies found that KFZPs also play other roles in cells. Here, the authors provide evidence that the KZFP ZFP30 promotes adipogenesis by targeting and activating a retrotransposon-derived Pparg2 enhancer in cooperation with co-regulator KRAB-associated protein 1 (KAP1).

Single-cell transcriptomics reveals that, in mice and humans, a population of cells in the stromal vascular fraction of adipose tissue regulates adipogenesis by suppressing adipocyte formation in a paracrine manner.

Adipose tissue is a major source of circulating exosomal miRNAs, which contribute to the regulation of gene expression in distant tissues and organs.

Mutations in proteins that localize to primary cilia cause devastating diseases, yet the primary cilium is a poorly understood organelle. Here the authors use interaction proteomics to identify a network of human ciliary proteins that provides new insights into several biological processes and diseases.