Developing cell lines derived from Japanese eel's adipose tissues.

Introduction:
It is regarded that there is no pure adipose tissues (fat body or fat pad) in the adult eel, although the fat content in the eel muscles can  be as high as over 20%. Otherwise,  it is easy to find  pure adipose tissues  in carps, tilapia, groupers, progy, and salmonids even in the juvenile stage. An adipocyte cell culture system has been established  to study the lipogenesis as well as adipogenesis in rainbow trouts or salmons, but not yet reported in the eel. Indeed, the eel, anguillides, is more primitive than other fish, and eel is appreicated by its grease and flavor. From the other side, it has been speculated that the lipid content in the eel muscle might a cue to trigger the reproductive seaward-migration. So , to art and to science, it would be important to study the adiopgenesis in the eel. This short note is to present our recent work in this field on the eel, and we firstly present  fat pads in the Japanese eel (Anguilla japonica) on  WWW.

Materials and Methods:
1. Eels are generously donated by Freshwater Aquaculture Research Center, Taiwan Fisheries Research Institute, COA, The eels are reared from the stage of glass eel by commercial feed (Fu Sow).
2. The enzymes, chemicals, buffers, CFS are provided by common companies (nothing special).
3. L-15 cell culture medium is employed to culture cells, the serum content is from 10 to 20%.
4. Cells are cultured at 25 C under 2% CO2 in humidity saturated CO2 incubator.
5. culture medium is renewed very three days.

Results:

Fig.1.1. pure fat pads obtained from the Japanese eel.    

 Fig.1.2. eel pure fat pads

Fig.2.1. cells derived from the fat pads

Fig.2.2. culture cells from the fat pads

Fig.3. culture cells for days

Fig.4. oil droplets in the culture cells

Fig.5. more closer view

Fig.6. culture endothelial cells without oil droplets as the negative controls

Discussion:

It seems that we have obtained cells containing oil droplets from Japanese eel's fat pads, they can be assumed as the preadipocytes. The next steps are to use activators to induce the transformation of the preadipocytes into adipocytes, and use oil-base dye to confirm the lipid inclusions.

P.S. Your mercy donation to support the going of our future research is highly appreciated. 

by 

 國立高雄大學 生命科學系

高雄市楠梓區高雄大學路 700 號
e-mail: yshuang@nuk.edu.tw

blog: http://pimpeneaucity.blogspot.com