이승훈 (한국기초과학지원연구원)

황금숙 (한국기초과학지원연구원)

이승훈 (한국기초과학지원연구원)

정영애 (한국기초과학지원연구원)

김건화 (한국기초과학지원연구원)

황금숙 (한국기초과학지원연구원)

Obesity is characterized by dysregulated lipid metabolism and excessive fat accumulation in adipose tissue. While white adipose tissue browning is considered a promising therapeutic approach, little is known about how browning-promoting interventions influence lipid molecular composition. Here, we investigated adipose tissue lipidomic remodeling induced by a selective Protein X inhibitor (PXi) in obese mice using LC/Q-TOF-MS.

Lipidomic profiles of the obesity group (OG) and PXi-treated obesity group (OG+PXi) were compared by multivariate and lipid subclass analysis. PXi treatment produced a distinct lipidomic phenotype, as evidenced by group separation in Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) and widespread alterations across lipid classes. Compared with the OG group, triacylglycerols (TAGs) were significantly reduced, whereas free fatty acids (FFAs), phosphatidylcholines (PCs), ether-linked phosphatidylethanolamines (PE-Os), and sphingomyelins (SMs) were significantly increased following PXi treatment. Stratification of lipids according to total fatty acyl carbon number and degree of unsaturation demonstrated that these alterations occurred broadly across lipids with diverse chain lengths and saturation states rather than within specific structural subclasses.

These findings indicate that PXi drives global remodeling of the adipose lipidome independent of fatty acyl chain length or degree of unsaturation, providing new insight into the metabolic effects of PXi in obesity.