Fatty acids and adipose cell differentiation.

Fatty acids are important metabolic substrates for adipose tissue. In preadipose cells, fatty acids are also potent inducers of various genes encoding proteins directly involved in fatty acid metabolism. On a longer-term basis, fatty acids induce the terminal differentiation of preadipose to adipose cells. Fatty acids act primarily at a transcriptional level. A member of the steroid/thyroid hormone receptor superfamily has been identified by cDNA cloning from a mouse Ob1771 preadipose cell library. This receptor is likely the fatty acid-activated receptor implicated in the transcriptional effects of fatty acids in adipose cells. Thus fatty acids appear to play a new role as signal transducing molecules which are involved in adipose cell differentiation.