TAG | Size and number of fat cells important |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Tuesday, 06 May 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 3 The goal of Kirsty L. Spalding, Jonas Frisen, and Peter Arner, at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden) and fellow colleagues was to find out whether fat cells increase or decrease in size in parallel with changes in human weight, and to find out if adults can actually make fat cells. They found that adult humans produce new fat cells to replace old cells regardless of their weight, gender, or age. However, only children and adolescents add to the numbers of their fat cells. Adults maintain a fixed number of fat cells. Spalding Technique The team used a process within their experiment that Dr. Spalding originally developed during her postdoctoral studies at the University of Western Australia, specifically in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology. At that time, Spalding used a technique involving carbon dating to test the life cycle of cells in humans, and later to discover whether neurons in the human brain replicate or not. Part of the technique that Spalding created was based on differences in carbon 14 (C-14), a radioactive isotope of carbon, found in the human body. Specifically, above-ground nuclear bomb testing, which occurred between the late 1940s and early 1960s (part of the period of time called the “Cold War”), caused enhanced levels of C-14 in people. The fallout from the nuclear explosions dropped C-14 onto plants, which humans ingested from the plants themselves or from the animals that ate the plants. Each year thereafter, as levels of C-14 drop in the atmosphere (and within plants), there is a corresponding drop of C-14 in the body of humans. Thus, Spalding was able to develop a technique to measure these C-14 levels. Consequently, the researchers found the age of cells using Spalding’s process. They used the process on people born before and after nuclear bomb testing performed in 1955. Learn more about the results on the next page. |
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