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Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Rockefeller University have identified an important cell that leads to obesity. According to the professor of Rockefeller University, Jeffrey Friedman, the identification of fat precursor cells called white adipocyte progenitor will help to detect factors that regulate the proliferation and differentiation of cells. The experiment will also help to find out how fat cells affect conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The scientists are of the view that if these white fat cells increase in number and mass in a living body then obesity will also increase. Because white fat cells cannot divide, scientists have hypothesized that a population of fat precursor cells must exist in the fat depot in order to produce new fat cells. But identifying them has been difficult.
The scientist used a technique called fluorescence-activated cell sorting, or FACS, to search for cell populations that could produce fat in cell cultures and identified two such populations. In order to find out if these cells can develop in to fat cells in living body, the scientists have injected cell populations into the fat depots of a genetically engineered fatless mouse. After that, they found that the white adipocyte progenitor cell population produces fat tissue in the fatless mouse.
