The 3T3-L1 cell line is a well-established and commonly used in vitro model to assess adipocyte differentiation. Over the course of several days, confluent 3T3-L1 cells can be converted to adipocytes in the presence of an adipogenic cocktail. In this study, the effects of chitosan oligosaccharides (CO) on adipocyte differentiation of 3T3-L1 cells were studied. The CO significantly decreased lip...

Adult rats of various strains became obese when they were fed a highly palatable diet for several months. Analysis of their adipose tissue morphology revealed increases in both adipocyte size and number in most depots. Reintroduction of an ordinary chow diet to such animals precipitated a period of weight loss during which only mean adipocyte size returned to normal. Adipocyte number remained a...

Obesity, a serious health risk factor, is often associated with depression and negatively affects many aspects of life. Injection of a formula comprising phosphatidylcholine (PPC) and deoxycholate (DC) has emerged as an alternative to liposuction in the reduction of local fat deposits. However, the formula component mainly responsible for this effect and the mechanism behind the actions of the ...

By capturing time-lapse images of primary stromal-vascular cells (SVCs) derived from rat mesenteric adipose tissue, we revealed temporal and spatial variations of lipid droplets (LDs) in individual SVCs during adipocyte differentiation. Numerous small LDs (a few micrometers in diameter) appeared in the perinuclear region at an early stage of differentiation; subsequently, several LDs grew to mo...

OBJECTIVE Previous work has suggested that white adipocytes may also show a mammary luminal secretory cell phenotype during lactation. The capacity of brown and beige/brite adipocytes to display a mammary cell phenotype and the levels at which they demonstrate such phenotypes in vivo is currently unknown. METHODS To investigate the putative adipocyte origin of mammary gland cells, we performe...

Epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation and histone modification are important in stem cell differentiation. Methylation is principally associated with transcriptional repression, and histone acetylation is correlated with an active chromatin state. We determined the effects of these epigenetic mechanisms on adipocyte differentiation in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from bone marr...

OBJECTIVE Adipose tissue relies on lipid droplet (LD) proteins in its role as a lipid-storing endocrine organ that controls whole body metabolism. Hypoxia-inducible Gene 2 (Hig2) is a recently identified LD-associated protein in hepatocytes that promotes hepatic lipid storage, but its role in the adipocyte had not been investigated. Here we tested the hypothesis that Hig2 localization to LDs in...

Adipocyte hypertrophy and hyperplasia together with angiogenesis contribute to the growth of the fat mass. Because changes in the extracellular matrix (ECM) components are often associated with such cellular remodeling, we studied the adipocyte expression of the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) 2 and 9, two key enzymes involved in the modulation of ECM. The present study provides the first evid...

Mast cells have been suggested to play key roles in adipogenesis. We herein show that the expression of preadipocyte, but not adipocyte, marker genes increases in the white adipose tissue of mast cell-deficient (Kit(W-sh/W-sh) ) mice under both obese and non-obese conditions. In vitro culturing with adipogenic factors revealed increased adipocytes differentiated from the Kit(W-sh/W-sh) stromal ...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND Obesity contributes to Type 2 diabetes by promoting systemic insulin resistance. Obesity causes features of metabolic dysfunction in the adipose tissue that may contribute to later impairments of insulin action in skeletal muscle and liver; these include reduced insulin-stimulated glucose transport, reduced expression of GLUT4, altered expression of adipokines, and adip...