[Adipocyte differentiation and its regulation]

Fat tissue and adipocytes have been exclusively investigated in the past two decades, especially in the last ten years, due to the following two reasons. Firstly, more and more studies showed that fat tissue is not only an organ for energy storage, but also an endocrine one that can secret many kinds of hormones or hormone-like peptides. Secondly, the established preadipocyte cell lines have been providing powerful tools for the in vitro research of adipocyte differentiation, because these immortal cell lines authentically represent, to a great extend, the in vivo situations of these cells and can be induced to differentiate into mature adipose cells with proper hormones. It has been demonstrated that there exists close relations between adipocyte differentiation and many physiological or pathological processes including saccharide and fat metabolism, energy balance, obesity, diabetes, hyperlipidemia and breast cancer. It is very important to make known the differentiation mechanisms of preadipocyte into adipocyte for understanding the above mentioned diseases and for screening anti-obesity and anti-diabetes drugs.