As most of us emerge from winter hibernation with a little extra insulation around the mid-section, it is important to remember that not all fat is bad. White fat, or white adipose tissue (WAT), is the typical fat most people have heard of. It stores your energy in deposits that accumulate around the body. Excessive white fat leads to obesity and large amounts of white fat may also create a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases.
Brown fat, also known as brown adipose tissue (BAT), is a special type of fat that functions to maintain body temperature. Brown fat is the driving fuel behind metabolic rate and temperature resistance.
Dr. Zhiqiang Lin, an Assistant Professor at the Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) and senior author, has successfully designed a new way to isolate brown fat cells for biochemistry applications. His team's work was published in JoVE.
Brown fat is made up of multiple cell types, complicating isolation due to contamination of unwanted cell types. Dr. Lin commented on his new method, “This technique will allow my lab, and the labs of other investigators, to more clearly study the relationship between brown fat cells and other cell types in BAT."
This new isolation technique will allow researchers to conduct higher quality biochemistry and genomic analyses on brown fat. Additional research in brown fat is set to understand the metabolic nature of brown fat use and development.
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