Cure Obesity With One Injection?
Scientists Claim to Have Found a Solution
Now researchers at Harvard and MIT have discovered that the “obesity gene” switches on two other genes which stop fat being burned up as heat – a process called thermogenesis.
The scientists proved they could manipulate the genes to reverse the signatures of obesity in both human cells and mice.
Melina Claussnitzer, study leader, added: “This discovery challenges the notion that when people get obese it was basically their own choice because they choose to eat too much or not exercise”.
“The researchers present a near-complete unveiling of how a genetic risk allele in a noncoding region of the genome really works”, Evan Rosen, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release. But a team of researchers has solved this big mystery of FTO.
“Knowing the causal variant underlying the obesity association may allow genome editing as a therapeutic avenue for individuals as risk”, said Professor Manolis Kellis, senior author from the MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and of the Broad Institute. With this discovery, “you now have a pathway for drugs that can make those fat cells work differently”. This then turns off thermogenesis, leading to lipid accumulation and ultimately obesity.
Scientists are the two universities claim to have discovered a way to tweak DNA so that it speeds up our metabolisms, which in turn burns excess fat quicker. Those mice lost more than 50 percent of their body fat, even though they ate and exercised as much as other mice did.
The key gene connected to obesity, responsible for people getting fatter, has finally been figured out.
In additional experiments, they established that IRX3 and IRX5 management thermogenesis – a cell course of for utilizing power shops to generate warmth – in fats cells.
Previously scientists thought that the variant, in a gene known as FTO (originally called fatso), worked in the brain to increase appetite. According to Kellis, a person who has the gene is not automatically destined to become obese but is only predisposed to it, the Associated Press reported.
The group is now linking up with analysis facilities and business companions to maneuver their findings from the lab to the clinic.
If future studies are successful, the method could offer a novel way to cure obesity, a major public health problem that experts say affects some 500 million people around the world and can lead to cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. But researchers might use similar strategies to those in this study to figure out how genetic variants are linked to other diseases.
Source : tjcnewspaper
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