The adipose tissue of animals in normal nutritional balance contains no histologically demonstrable glycogen. However, Gierke 1906 found that glycogen is deposited in the fat cells of guinea-pigs refed after a period of fasting. The occurrence of glycogen in the fat of other animal species under similar experimental conditions has been confirmed by several European investigators (Arndt, 1926, Wertheimer 1928, Richter 1931, Eger 1938, 1942). Among these Arndt, using dogs, also reported a transient accumulation of glycogen in the fat cells after insulin administration. These old observations take on new interest in the light of recent advances in our knowledge of the biochemistry of adipose tissue (Hook and Barron 1941, Mirski 1942), and the relation of insulin to lipogenesis (Drury 1940, Stetten and Klein 1946). We have therefore undertaken to investigate, with an improved staining method, the deposition of glycogen in the brown and white adipose tissues of normal and diabetic rats, rats given insulin, and rats refed after a period of fasting.
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Don W. Fawcett (1948) studied this question.