Factors That Regulate Size Of Cellular Fat Pools, Obesity

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As the national waistline expands, so do pools of intra-cellular fat known as lipid droplets. Although most of us wish our lipid droplets would vanish, they represent a cellular paradox: on the one hand droplets play beneficial roles by corralling fat into non-toxic organelles. On the other, oversized lipid droplets are associated with obesity and its associated health hazards.

Until recently researchers understood little about factors that regulate lipid droplet size. Now, a study from the Stowers Institute of Medical Research published in an upcoming issue of Journal of Cell Biology reports a genetic screen of roundworms that identifies two proteins required for the dramatic expansion of lipid droplets. That study, from the lab of Assistant Investigator Ho Yi Mak, Ph.D., sheds new light onto the molecular processes linked to fat metabolism.

One - obesity has nothing to do with "droplet size."

Two - there is only one factor.

Three - that factor is more Calories in than out.

Four - done.