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Fat cells with a sweet tooth

Some fat cells convert energy into heat, so targeting them to induce weight loss is appealing. The discovery that a subset of the cells burns glucose, rather than both glucose and lipids, could improve our ability to do just that.
  1. Wenfei Sun

    1. Wenfei Sun is at the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, ETH Zurich, 8603 Schwerzenbach, Switzerland.

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  2. Christian Wolfrum

    1. Christian Wolfrum is at the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, ETH Zurich, 8603 Schwerzenbach, Switzerland.

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Fat is often thought of as a means to store energy in the form of lipids. But this is just the role of white fat cells. The body also contains a second type of fat that burns the energy stored in nutrients to produce heat, enabling mammals to maintain their body temperature in a cold environment1. Activating this ‘thermogenic’ fat is thought to be an attractive way to combat obesity2. Writing in Nature, Chen et al.3 identify a previously uncharacterized type of thermogenic fat cell, which is derived from a hitherto unknown cell lineage and burns mainly sugar, rather than the sugar and lipid combination processed by most thermogenic fat. Its discovery could open up new therapeutic possibilities for weight loss.

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Nature 565, 167-168 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07739-6

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