Gene Found-Gene That Protects High-Fat-Diet Mice From Obesity

09-03-2009 • red Orbit

University of Michigan researchers have identified a gene that acts as a master switch to control obesity in mice. When the switch is turned off, even high-fat-diet mice remain thin. Deleting the gene, called IKKE, also appears to protect mice against conditions that, in humans, lead to Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity and is on the rise among Americans, including children and adolescents. If follow-up studies show that IKKE is tied to obesity in humans, the gene and the protein it makes will be prime targets for the development of drugs to treat obesity, diabetes and complications associated with those disorders, said Alan Saltiel, the Mary Sue Coleman Director of the U-M Life Sciences Institute. "We've studied other genes associated with obesity – we call them 'obesogenes' – but this is the first one we've found that, when deleted, stops the animal from gaining weight," said Saltiel, senior author of a paper to be published in the S