Paradoxical Decrease of an Adipose-Specific Protein, Adiponectin, in Obesity

We isolated the human adipose-specific and most abundant gene transcript, apM1 (Maeda, K., et al.,Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun.221, 286–289, 1996). The apM1 gene product was a kind of soluble matrix protein, which we named adiponectin. To quantitate the plasma adiponectin concentration, we have produced monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies for human adiponectin and developed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) system. Adiponectin was...