Hiroyuki Mori, Postdoctoral Fellow, MacDougald Lab, Department of Physiology, University of Michigan Medical School

Fat is a highly vascularized tissue and it has been shown that the expansion of fat stores requires the concomitant expansion of blood vessels. Thus disruption of the growth of the blood vessels into fat might be useful as a means to prevent obesity. Similarly, almost all vessels have a close association with fat, which acts both to support and even to nurture the vessel (with specific secreted chemicals). Thus, a better understanding of how fat and blood vessels talk to each other is important. This image shows the close association of fat cells (the lipid is stained purple) and blood vessels (green) in a mouse. The small red dots are cell nuclei.