Actually Fat Cells are "smarter" than you think....I use the term loosley as I did my earlier pontification.
Fat cells divide and conquer
Prins' story began 10 years ago with the discovery that fat cells, like other cells in human tissue, were capable of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, and regeneration.
He says it was possible to isolate immature cells, or fibroblasts known as pre-adipocytes from adipose tissue, or fat.
In a test tube, those immature fat cells could be encouraged to differentiate, or grow into mature fat cells capable of doing what fat cells are supposed to do, store fat.
He also found it was possible to manipulate the pre-adipocytes to either accelerate or inhibit their growth.
The finding contradicted the existing belief that human adults have a finite number of fat cells that either expand as they store excess fat or shrink as fat reserves are depleted.
"Changes in fat mass couldn't just be explained by changes in the size of cells, but by their recruitment and loss," Prins says.
In other words, the belief that a person was doomed to be butterball or a greyhound by virtue of the actual number of fat cells they were stuck with no longer held water.
Fighting fat
Dr Tim Gill, executive officer of the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity, says the discovery that fat cells can differentiate has opened up new avenues for anti-obesity therapeutics.
But he says many factors contribute to obesity and controlling it is unlikely to be as easy as manipulating a single pathway.
Parents who feel guilty about predisposing their child to a life of being fat could take heart from the finding, he says.
"This shows that, yes the primary need for fat cells is to store fat, but when you lose weight it's possible for those fat cells to die off because they're no longer needed; they're not sitting around waiting to be fed," he says.
