August 2015
Scientists at MIT and Harvard University have finally figured out how the key gene tied to obesity makes people fat, a major discovery that could open the door to an entirely new approach to the problem beyond diet and exercise. The FTO gene turns out to influence obesity indirectly, as a master switch that affects two other genes that control thermogenesis, or burning off energy. Experiments reveal that a faulty version of the FTO gene causes energy from food to be stored as fat rather than burned.
Publications
- Microbial Species Delineation Using Whole-Genome Sequences
- Trans-Reactivation: A New Epigenetic Phenomenon Underlying Transcriptional Reactivation of Silenced Genes
- Targeted Next-Generation Sequencing for Clinical Diagnosis of 561 Mendelian Diseases
- Allelic Spectra of Risk SNPs are Different for Environment/Lifestyle Dependent Versus Independent Diseases
News
- 150 Years Later, Genetics Research is Changing Our Lives for the Better
- Global Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) Market to Reach USD$8,599 Million by 2020
- CAD$93 Million Supports Genomics Projects in Agriculture and Fisheries
- Marker-Assisted Breeding is Crucial to Improved Peanut Varieties
- Women’s Immune System Genes Operate Differently From Men’s
