Isolation and characterization of adipose tissue macrophages

Abstract

This chapter describes a technique that can be used to isolate adipose tissue macrophages (ATMs) from the visceral white adipose tissue. Nevertheless, this technique can also be used to isolate ATMs from subcutaneous white adipose tissue and brown adipose tissue from mouse, human subcutaneous fat depot, and also from the fat body of the toad Xenopus. We detail the flow-cytometric gating strategy that has been developed to identify ATM population, and we describe the isolation of RNA from this population and its use for gene expression profiling. Finally, we describe in vitro culture of ATMs for downstream applications.