Trash Talk by Fat

Adipose tissue is increasingly being considered as more than just a storage depot for sources of metabolic energy.We are learning that adipose tissue is dynamic, capable of remodeling, of shifting its metabolic program when challenged and of contributing to both health and disease.Of keen interest is the secretome of adipose depots.With the discovery of Leptin in 1994, a new avenue of research into adipokines and the cardiovascular system was born.A rich group of adipocyte-derived proteins is being discovered as important to cardiovascular function.In the paper by Neves and colleagues in this issue (1), chemerin is the protein of focus.Chemerin was discovered less than twenty years ago in skin, not in adipocytes (2).Tazarotene-induced gene 2 (TIG2 or chemerin) was initially described as being upregulated by retinoids in skin.The ability of chemerin to function as an adipokine and regulate adipogenesis through a receptor (IUPHAR recognized as ChemR23 in 2013) was supported ten years later in 2007 by several groups (3,4,5).The significant positive association, observed by multiple groups, of circulating chemerin levels with obesity makes chemerin a compelling target to investigate relative to the pathologies of obesity (6).To be sure, a focus on chemerin in experimental science has been in population studies which provide the foundation for wanting to understand the biology of chemerin.