There is a Skinny Gene After All!

Yay for Dr. Jonathan Graff and his team from UT Southwestern Medical Center! They have just re-discovered the long lost "skinny" gene:

The gene, called adipose, was discovered in fat fruit flies more than 50 years ago by a graduate student at Yale University, but few people knew about it. Its mechanism was unknown, and whether it’s important in other genes was a mystery. [...]

It was discovered that the gene, which is also present in humans, is likely to be a high-level master switch that tells the body whether to accumulate or burn fat.

In the mice, the researchers found that increasing adipose activity improved the animals’ health in many ways. Mice with experimentally increased adipose activityate 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.

Link | MSNBC Article