WIKIMEDIA, OPENSTAX COLLEGEThe origins of new fat cells (adipocytes), which we humans must make throughout our lives, have not been clear. Rodent studies have produced conflicting results on where adipocyte progenitors come from, particularly with regard to the bone marrow as a possible source. Reporting today (July 16) in Cell Metabolism, researchers have found that, in patients who received bone marrow transplants, donor cells contribute to new fat tissue, and that the proportion of these bone marrow-derived adipocytes is higher in obese patients.
“In these bone marrow-transplanted individuals, they can actually find fat cells with genomic information from the donor and not from the recipient,” said Philipp Scherer, director of the Touchstone Diabetes Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who was not involved in the study.
Although the contribution of bone marrow cells to the abdominal fat is low—about 5 percent, on average, with a range up to 27 percent—it’s “conceptually important that we can actually demonstrate that the bone marrow in the adult individual contributes to new fat-cell generation,” Scherer told The Scientist.
Fat cells do not divide; instead, they live about 10 years and are then replaced, according to a 2008 Nature paper by Peter Arner of the Karolinska Institute in ...
