Mammalian lipid droplets (LDs), first described as early as the 1880s, were virtually ignored for more than 100 years. Between 1991 and the early 2000s, however, a series of discoveries and conceptual breakthroughs led to a resurgent interest in obesity as a disease, in the metabolism of intracellular triacylglycerol (TAG), and in the physical locations of LDs as cellular structures with their associated proteins. Insights included the recognition that obesity underlies major chronic diseases, that appetite is hormonally controlled, that hepatic steatosis is not a benign finding, and that diabetes might fundamentally be a disorder of lipid metabolism. In this brief review, I describe the metamorphosis of LDs from overlooked globs of stored fat to dynamic organelles that control insulin resistance, mitochondrial oxidation, and viral replication.

最早在1880年代就被描述的哺乳动物脂质滴（LDs）实际上已经被忽略了100多年。然而，在1991年至2000年代初期，一系列发现和概念性突破引起了人们对肥胖作为一种疾病，细胞内三酰甘油（TAG）的新陈代谢以及LDs作为与其相关的细胞结构的物理位置的兴趣重新兴起的兴趣。蛋白质。见解包括认识到肥胖是主要的慢性疾病的根源，食欲受到激素控制，肝脂肪变性不是良性发现，糖尿病从根本上说可能是脂质代谢障碍。在这篇简短的评论中，我描述了LDs的变态，从被忽略的脂肪堆积到控制胰岛素抵抗，线粒体氧化和病毒复制的动态细胞器。