Abstract
Obesity promotes premature aging and dysfunction of white adipose tissue (WAT) through the accumulation of cellular senescence. The senescent cells burden in WAT has been linked to inflammation, insulin-resistance (IR), and type 2 diabetes (T2D). There is limited knowledge about molecular mechanisms that sustain inflammation in obese states. Here, we describe a robust and physiologically relevant in vitro system to trigger senescence in mouse 3T3-L1 preadipocytes. By employing transcriptomics analyses, we discovered up-regulation of key pro-inflammatory molecules and activation of interferon/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT)1/3 signaling in senescent preadipocytes, and expression of downstream targets was induced in epididymal WAT of obese mice, and obese human adipose tissue. To test the relevance of STAT1/3 signaling to preadipocyte senescence, we used Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) technology to delete STAT1/3 and discovered that STAT1 promoted growth arrest and cooperated with cyclic Guanosine Monophosphate-Adenosine Monophosphate (GMP-AMP) synthase-stimulator of interferon genes (cGAS-STING) to drive the expression of interferon β (IFNβ), C-X-C motif chemokine ligand 10 (CXCL10), and interferon signaling-related genes. In contrast, we discovered that STAT3 was a negative regulator of STAT1/cGAS-STING signaling-it suppressed senescence and inflammation. These data provide insights into how STAT1/STAT3 signaling coordinates senescence and inflammation through functional interactions with the cGAS/STING pathway.