DeMartinis F D, Francendese A
J Lipid Res. 1982 Nov;23(8):1107-20.
A normal Gaussian distribution of fat cell diameters has been found in the adipose depots of most animals and man. In our early work we observed very small fat cells in isolated cell preparations of normal adult rat epididymal pads and frequency distributions of measured fat cell diameters were bimodal, indicating the existence of a separate population of very small fat cells in addition to the normal adipocyte population. We investigated in detail the age- and weight gain-associated changes in adipocyte size distribution from a unimodal distribution in very young animals to a bimodal distribution in maturing heavier animals. Bimodality in the epidymal depot was fully established by 14 weeks of life and persisted without detectable change to 28 months of age. Several other depots representing deep abdominal and subcutaneous adipose tissue in adult rats and in the adult form of male guinea pigs, female C57 BL/6J lean mice, rabbits, and cats also have been found to contain bimodal adipocyte populations. Our results show that in normal adipose depots of several mammalian species a separate population of very small fat cells exists in addition to the usual adipocyte population and we conclude this is a characteristic morphologic feature of adult mammalian adipose tissue.
在大多数动物和人类的脂肪库中，已发现脂肪细胞直径呈正态高斯分布。在我们早期的研究中，我们在正常成年大鼠附睾脂肪垫的分离细胞制剂中观察到非常小的脂肪细胞，并且测量的脂肪细胞直径的频率分布是双峰的，这表明除了正常的脂肪细胞群体外，还存在一个单独的非常小的脂肪细胞群体。我们详细研究了从非常年幼动物的单峰分布到成熟较重动物的双峰分布的脂肪细胞大小分布与年龄和体重增加相关的变化。附睾脂肪库中的双峰现象在14周龄时完全形成，并持续到28月龄，无明显变化。在成年大鼠以及成年雄性豚鼠、雌性C57 BL/6J瘦小鼠、兔子和猫的腹部深层和皮下脂肪组织的其他几个脂肪库中，也发现含有双峰脂肪细胞群体。我们的结果表明，在几种哺乳动物的正常脂肪库中，除了通常的脂肪细胞群体外，还存在一个单独的非常小的脂肪细胞群体，我们得出结论，这是成年哺乳动物脂肪组织的一个特征性形态学特征。
