Comparative multi-tissue profiling reveals extensive tissue-specificity in transcriptome reprogramming upon cold exposure

Abstract

Cold exposure is an extensively used intervention for enhancing thermogenic and mitochondrial activity in adipose tissues. As such, it has been suggested as a potential lifestyle intervention for body weight maintenance. The metabolic consequences of cold acclimation are not limited to the adipose tissues, however the impact on rest of the tissues in context of their gene expression profile remains unclear. Here we provide a systematic characterization of cold exposure-mediated effects in a comparative multi-tissue RNA sequencing approach using wide range of organs including spleen, bone marrow, spinal cord, brain, hypothalamus, ileum, liver, subcutaneous-, visceral- and brown adipose tissues. Our findings highlight that transcriptional responses to cold exposure exhibit high degree of tissue-specificity both at the gene level and at GO enrichment gene sets, which is not directed by the basal gene expression pattern exhibited by the various organs. Our study places the cold adaptation of individual tissues in a whole-organism framework and provides an integrative transcriptional analysis necessary for understanding the cold exposure-mediated biological reprograming.