Thousands of years ago, finding food was no easy task and our bodies became increasingly specialised in storing a precious energy resource: fat. 

However, now the situation is quite different. In today’s society, with our typically sedentary lives and high-calorie diets, we accumulate fat very quickly and its excess in our bodies is directly related to obesity and other metabolic health problems.

When we ingest excess calories, cells called adipocytes are responsible for storing them as fat. This prevents fat from being deposited in other tissues and organs such as the liver or the walls of blood vessels, which would be harmful. Until now, it was not fully understood how adipocytes managed to store this fat without becoming overwhelmed but, recently, a team from the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), led by the researcher from the CaixaResearch network Miguel Ángel del Pozo, has made a breakthrough.

Their study, published in Nature Communications, describes the mechanism by which adipocytes expand safely. They do so thanks to caveolae, small folds in the cell membrane that act as sensors and transducers of the tension generated as a result of fat accumulating.

“When the adipocyte fills with fat, the caveolae flatten out, helping it to grow and store a lot more lipids without breaking” explains del Pozo. As a result, they prevent fat from being released into the body, which would lead to inflammation and metabolic alterations.

This study’s findings represent a significant breakthrough in our understanding of metabolic diseases and open the door to the development of new therapeutic strategies to combat disorders related to chronic excess energy, such as being overweight or obese, lipodystrophy and metabolic syndrome. These findings also throw light on the mechanisms that regulate the accumulation of fat and could reveal why metabolic health can vary between people with similar fat deposits.

Find out more about this study in the following thread on X.