By Ann Baker
Ever wonder why some people can stuff their faces and never gain a pound, while others eat only rabbit food but can’t lose weight? A new study from a Texas medical center might have found the answer in what’s it’s calling a “skinny” gene.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have discovered a single gene that might be the body’s trigger to store fat or burn it off. It’s a promising find for new ways to fight obesity and diabetes.
“From worms to mammals, this gene controls fat formation,” says Dr. Jonathan Graff, associate professor of developmental biology and internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of a study appearing in the Sept. 5 issue of Cell Metabolism. “It could explain why so many people struggle to lose weight and suggests an entirely new direction for developing medical treatments that address the current epidemic of diabetes and obesity,” he says.
The gene was first discovered 50 years ago in fat fruit flies. It’s called adipose. The UT Southwestern researchers looked into how adipose works by watching fruit flies, tiny worms and genetically engineered mice. By using sophisticated molecular techniques, they were able to manipulate adipose in those organisms by turning the gene off and on. That’s how they figured out that the gene, which humans also have, is much like a high-level master switch that tells the body to burn or store fat.
In the mice, the researchers found that increasing adipose activity improved the animals’ health in many ways. Mice with experimentally increased adipose activity ate as much or more than normal mice; however, they were leaner, had diabetes-resistant fat cells, and were better able to control insulin and blood-sugar metabolism.
In contrast, animals with reduced adipose activity were fatter, less healthy and had diabetes.
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