Discovering the Obesity Gene

The story of how the first obesity-related gene was identified begins all the way back in 1950 when researchers at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, found that one of their strains of laboratory mice was extremely fat and so hungry that they ate virtually all the time. No matter how much they ate, they still wanted more food.

It was not until 1994, however, that a researcher team at the Rockeffeler University in New York City discovered that the reason these mice ate so much and were so large was because of variants in the gene responsible for producing the protein leptin.

Leptin is produced by fat cells and is secreted in into the blood. It then circulates throughout the body and signals the brain that it’s time to turn the feeling of hunger. Therefore, the leptin gene is responsible for producing our body’s own appetite suppressant.

Variants in this gene, however, can cause it to malfunction. As a result, the body can’t produce adequate amounts of Leptin, the brain never gets the off signal, and the mouse’s appetite becomes constantly and overwhelmingly voracious. When the obese mice were injected with the correct amount of leptin, they stopped overreacting and lost weight! The scientists, understandably, believed they’d found the cure for obesity.

Unfortunately, however, when they began to study the leptin gene in obese humans, the found that variants within this gene were not a common cause of obesity. And when one drug company administered leptin to obese people, only a small percentage lost significance weight.

Since the discovery of the leptin gene, however, researchers have made great strides in discovering other genes that are much more common cause of obesity in humans.

The Body mass index (BMI), a ratio based on the relationship between height and weight, is commonly used to figure out if a person is underweight, normal, overweight, or obese. If you want to find out your BMI, there is easy-to-use calculator in the following website. Simply plug in your weight and height and you will be given your BMI

About 50% of Scandinavian women are blonde, tall and …….thin. Scandinavians are known for their tall, thin physique, and although a healthy lifestyle may play a role, there are also genetic forces at work.

Some Scandinavians are genetically predisposed to being thin. Variants in the GPR74 gene, carried by 1 in 20 Scandinavians, have been found to significantly increase the body’s ability to break down fat. Because of this, people with these variants are predisposed to having lower body fat and slimmer waistlines.

In addition to the GPR74 variant, there are other so-called skinny genes, many of which are involved with either fat storage or rate of metabolism.