Fat Cell
Storage Cell
About the Fat Cell
Storage Cell
Under the skin and around organs
Adipocytes form fat tissue that stores energy, cushions organs, and insulates the body.
Clinical and real-world context
Fat cells store energy and release hormones, so their number and size matter in obesity and metabolic disease.
3 structures to explore
Lipid Droplet
The fuel tank
White fat cells store energy as one huge droplet of fat that can fill most of the cell.
Fat is dissolved away during routine slide preparation, so fat cells look like empty rings.
Pushed-aside Nucleus
Squeezed to the edge
The large droplet crowds the nucleus into a thin crescent against the membrane, a signet ring appearance under the microscope.
Fat tissue can expand by growing cells larger as well as by adding new ones.
Thin Cytoplasm Rim
A narrow shell
Most organelles are confined to a thin rim of cytoplasm around the droplet, where enzymes add and remove fat as the body needs.
Fat cells also release hormones such as leptin.