Effect of Alloxan-Diabetes on the Activity of Citrate Cleavage Enzyme in Adipose Tissue

Abstract

IT has been known since the work of Stetten and Boxer¹ that glucose is rapidly converted into lipid in tissues of well-fed animals, while lipogenesis is greatly depressed in tissues of diabetic animals. Neither liver slices nor adipose tissue from diabetic rats can convert glucose labelled with carbon-14 into fatty acids^2,3. The rate of synthesis of long-chain fatty acids from glucose by isolated tissues removed from normal animals is actually more rapid in adipose tissue than in liver, whether expressed on a wet weight or a protein basis⁴. The relatively high rate of lipogenesis in adipose tissue, coupled with its abundance, has suggested that this tissue may be of predominant importance in the in vivo synthesis of lipid^4,5. While there has been extensive work on the enzymatic lesions in fatty acid synthesis in the livers of alloxan-diabetic rats, adipose tissue has not been so widely studied^5,6.