Figure 1.

Autophagy regulated obesity through phenotype change. Loss of autophagy in preadipocyte altered the normal differentiation process to white adipocyte and resulted in “brown-like” adipocyte, which was smaller with multilocular lipid droplet and more mitochondria. Metabolically, it had increased energy consumption through free fatty acid β-oxidation with consequently reduced lipid storage, less fat mass and increased insulin sensitivity.