Oil Red O staining was performed on GMEC according to a method described previously [37 (link)]. The images were captured using a Leica fluorescent microscope (DMI4000B, Weztlar, Germany).
For assay of FA profiles, collected GMEC were scraped off the culture dish using a 2-mL aliquot of 2.5% (vol/vol) vitriol:methanol. Then, total lipid extraction and methylation were performed according to Shi et al. [38 (link)]. Methylated lipid samples were analyzed using a Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) installed with an HP-88 column (100 m × 0.25 mm i.d. × 0.25 μm film thickness, Agilent Technologies) following a published procedure [8 (link)]. The relative proportion of each FA was determined as the ratio of the FA peak to the total peaks in each run. Data for each FA were analyzed as a proportion of the total FAs detected.