Biologists approached the management of fat deposition. To determine whether fat will grow under the skin or inside the body, mouse stem cells.
Scientists from the University of Aberdeen (UK) talked about their work at the annual scientific conference on stem cells in the British city of Nottingham. Researchers studied the process of formation of fat deposits at the cellular level, tracing their fate up to the stem cells.
Stem cells are known to give rise to all other types of cells, including, naturally, adipose tissue cells. Initially immortal and not having a certain specialization, the cell in the division forms first a number of stem cells with a narrower "profession" (for example, stem cells of the blood), and then from these "narrow specialists" are obtained groups of ordinary cells with rigidly defined functions.
Where the fat cells-under the skin or deep into the body-are directed, it is at the stage of the specialization of stem cells. In a series of experiments with mice, a group led by Kevin Docherty found out which role palmitic acid plays in this process, the main component of palm oil.
Two pieces of the puzzle. About the fact that palm oil helps reduce fat deposits, scientists have already been aware of. It was also previously established that the fate of future fat cells is determined by both female and male sex hormones (one of the articles devoted to this issue is dated back to 1989). What, then, is the novelty of the current work of British researchers?.
According to Docherty, they managed to show that palmitic acid affects cells not just by itself. It changes the response of stem cells to sex hormones, and they determine the further direction of fat migration.
Not every fat is equally beautiful.
What is internal, that the subcutaneous fat deposits normally have a certain physiological role, and it is impossible to get rid of them completely. Fatty tissue stores nutrient stores, and subcutaneous fat also protects against temperature changes. In some animals, for example the Baikal seal, the layer of this fat exceeds a dozen centimeters, and only because of this it manages to survive in water with a temperature of about zero degrees.
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