These transcriptional features characterize an adipocyte equipped for lipid storage and turnover, which in ASAT is considered a ‘healthy’ phenotype (Hammarstedt et al. 2018; Sakers et al. 2022), but could be indicative of an AT depot poised for expansion and thus detrimental within skeletal muscle tissue as previously shown in obesity and metabolic disease (Goodpaster et al. 2023). Here, ABCB7 is linked to metabolic disease.