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Advance in Molecular Mechanism of Adipocyte Differentiation
Wu Jiali1, Zhang Xiuling1, Du Runjia2, Huang Rui1*, Zhao Zhifang1, Yang Zhanli1
1Medical College of Northwest Minzu University, Lanzhou 730030, China;2Department of Ultrasound, Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital, Lanzhou 730050, China
Abstract: Obesity is an increasing health problem all over the world. Obesity occurs when energy intake by an individual exceeds the rate of energy expenditure. At the cellular level， obesity was originally considered a hypertrophic disease resulting from an increase in the number and/or the size of individual adipocytes. Adipogenesis is thought to occur in two stages. In the first stage， new fat cells could arise from a mesenchymal stem cells or through the dedifferentiation of adipocytes to preadipocytes. Then preadipocytes proliferate and terminal differentiation into mature adipocytes in the second stage. The differentiation of adipocytes from preadipocytes has been extensively studied in the cell lines of preadipocyte such as 3T3-L1. This paper reviewed the advance in molecular mechanism of differentiation of adipocytes which mainly involved the epigenomic activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) induced by adipogenic stimuli and the synergistic action between activated PPARγ and CCAAT enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) family transcription factors during the process of transformation from committed preadipocytes to terminally differentiated cells. Meanwhile， the focal points and developing trend about the differentiation of adipocytes were also discussed.
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