Hormonal
Mature white adipocytes can undergo bidirectional transdifferentiation into brite (brown-in-white) adipocytes in response to cold exposure, allowing the body to adjust the ratio of lipid-storing to lipid-burning cells within existing fat depots without requiring new cell differentiation from precursors.
This research suggests that your body's fat cells are not permanently stuck as 'storage' units. Exposure to cold can trigger existing white fat cells to become 'brite' cells that burn energy. While this doesn't replace diet and exercise, it highlights that metabolic flexibility exists and can potentially be influenced by environmental factors like cold exposure to support energy expenditure.
We could recently show that mature adipocytes in this depot have the potential to interconvert between cells with the typical characteristics of white and brown adipocytes. This means that the ratio of lipid-storing to lipid-burning cells can be adjusted within an existing adipose depot depending on the environmental temperature without the need for de novo cell differentiation from precursors.
Why this rating
Based on direct experimental validation using lineage tracing in adult mice, which is high-quality mechanistic evidence, though extrapolation to humans is noted as potential.
Source
The origin and definition of brite versus white and classical brown adipocytes
Matthias Rosenwald et al. · Adipocyte · 2013
DOI 10.4161/adip.26232
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