While both pyruvate and lactate are good substrates for glyceride-glycerol synthesis in isolated adipocytes from fed rats and guinea pigs, neither alanine nor serine appear to support glyceroneogenesis. Fasting increases the proportion of radioactive pyruvate or lactate incorporated into glyceride-glycerol and reciprocally decreases the proportion incorporated into fatty acids. However, the total incorporation of radioactivity into triacylglycerol is considerably lower in isolated adipocytes from fasted than from fed animals. Addition of glucose to the incubation medium promotes the incorporation of radioactive lactate into both fatty acids and glyceride-glycerol by adipocytes from fasted as well as fed animals. The concentration of alpha-glycerolphosphate is considerably higher in adipose tissue of fed than fasted animals. In general, these results support the presence of a glyceroneogenic pathway in rat and guinea pig adipose tissue. However, it would appear that the physiologic significance of this pathway is less important in the fasted than the fed state, where it may play some role in the esterification of intracellular fatty acids.