"Anything and everything that he could stick under the microscope, he did," Plikus says. Leydig's book described fat-like cells in a sample of cartilage from rat ears. But 19th-century tools couldn't expand beyond that observation, and, realizing that a more accurate census of skeletal tissue might be valuable for medicine, Plikus resolved to crack the case.
"That immediately suggested they must have a completely different role that has nothing to do with metabolism," Plikus says. "It has to be structural."
"Lipochondrocytes are like balloons filled with vegetable oil. They're soft and amorphous but still resist compression. This contributes meaningfully to the structural integrity of skeletal tissue."
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