Lipolytic activity in adipocyte cell fractions.

Adipocytes release only negligible amounts of free fatty acids unless stimulated, but reveal considerable lipolytic activity when homogenized. Epinephrine treatment of the cells caused only a 20-40% increase in the activity of infranatants of homogenates while raising the activity associated with the fat layer up to 10-fold. Full activity (i.e. that of intact-activated cells) could be revealed by epinephrine treatment of the homogenate as well as by sonication of the fat layer in buffer. The combination of both treatments did not yield higher activities. The fat cake contains the bulk of the potential activities which are only realized when dispersed in the aqueous phase by sonication, or upon hormone activation of the whole homogenate. Increase in activity could also be obtained by removal of most of the lipid from the fat layer by extraction with petroleum ether. Re-introduction of extracted lipid inhibited lipolysis. The active enzyme could be separated by flotation at 1.12 specific gravity. The data suggest that the lack of activity in the intact non-stimulated cell may be due to the lack of availability of the aqueous phase to the enzyme.