Molecular nutrition & food research
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Food and nutrition studies often require accessing metabolically active tissues, including adipose tissue. This can involve invasive biopsy procedures that can be a limiting factor in study design. In contrast, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) are a population of circulating immune cells that are easily accessible through venipuncture. As transcriptomics is of growing importance in food and metabolism research, understanding the transcriptomic relationship between these tissue types can provide insight into the utility of PBMCs in this field. ⋯ The PBMC transcriptome may therefore provide a unique insight into the inflammatory component of metabolic health, as opposed to directly reflecting the metabolic component of the adipose tissue transcriptome.