Credit: Image: Courtesy of Jae Myoung Suh, research associate, Gene Expression Laboratory
The Salk researchers discovered that mice lacking a protein known as fibroblast growth factor 1 (FGF1) were unable to store and use fat normally.
When these mice were switched from a high-fat diet to a normal diet, they developed uneven lumps of fat (seen in white in the above image) in their body tissues, suggesting that their fat metabolism mechanisms had gone awry.