Scientists Find Obesity Causing Genes
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Scientists, including leading Geneticist Dr Schadt, based in Seattle have discovered three different genes which can be directly linked with weight gain. This research, which employed a new technique used to identify genes, could dramatically increase the success of efforts to combat the modern day obesity pandemic by allowing drugs to be better targeted when treating this condition.
In the UK alone it is estimated that there are now 10 million adults and 2 million children suffering with obesity, with the growth of these figures expecting to continue. So good news for the NHS, whose policy has long been to combat these figures due to the escalating cost of treating obesityas well as other conditions which are commonly contributed to by this condition, including cancer and type 2 Diabetes. It is hoped that with this recent advancement that the same techniques used in this research will at some point be used in identifying and treating other conditions from a genial perspective.
This technique, knows as a ‘molecular network’ approach, identified three separate genes which can promote weight gain, these are – Lpl, Lactb and Ppm11. Under clinical conditions this discovery was achieved by selecting and categorising obesity within several mice and finding which gene traits they had in common.
Dr Eric Schadt’s findings, published in Nature, concluded that Obesity among other conditions are merely complex combinations of molecular networks and outside environmental factors which can be countered both medically and genetically. He Said “Our Analysis provides direct experimental support that complex traits such as obesity are emergent properties of molecular networks that are modulated by complex genetic loci and environmental factors”.