During obesity, the adipose tissue expand which triggers the increase in the cell number. The size of a fat cell increases which develops in a depot-dependent manner in both genetic and diet-induced obese rats before an increase in the cell number.
There are locally produced growth factors which are responsible for the differential development of the adipose tissue. Adipose tissue comproses of mature adipocytes, fibroblasts,endothelial cells, preadipocytes at various stages of development.