FIGURE 5.

The two compartment (or two cell-type) hypothesis. Two different cell types exist within an adipose tissue depot; 1) undifferentiated adipocytes which do not synthesize triglyceride and are predominantly glycolytic (left side); 2) differentiated adipocytes which display the phenotype characteristic of mature adipocytes (namely a large triglyceride reservoir) and synthesize triglyceride (right side). The differentiated adipocytes may rely mostly on glyceroneogenesis for the deposition of triglyceride.