Food-Lovers Listen Up!

http://www.visembryo.com/story1395.html

          As we all may be well aware of by now obesity is quickly becoming a dangerous trend among the greater population of the United States. We have always been told that being physically active and eating healthy would be the key to physical health, however, regardless of how simple being physically fit sounds, the United States still finds itself battling rapid increases in obesity. So, now science may be coming to the rescue and may hold the key to sequestering this growing trend. Recently, researchers have discovered a gene that when deleted prevents obesity in mice on high fat diets, which now researchers are hoping can be replicated in humans to decrease these rates of obesity. Don’t you wish you could eat anything you wanted and not have to worry about the calories or where on your body that food will go?

            So, food-lovers listen up…you may finally be able to enjoy all the food in the world without dreading gaining a few pounds. Research lead by Prof. James McManaman, Ph.D., vice-chairman of research for Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has discovered a gene, Plin2, which produces a protein that regulates fat storage and metabolism in mice and humans that when deleted prevents mice from being obese, even when placed on a high fat diet. Numerous advantages have been revealed with the deletion of this gene, firstly, mice without the gene ate less and were more active, secondly, fatty liver disease usually related to obesity and commonly found in humans and rodents was undetected, among others. This study has also found that without the presence of the gene, fat can be metabolized faster, which is something many of us humans struggle with, from dieting to supplements to help increase our metabolizes, deletion of this gene may be the answer to our problems.

            This type of research could open so many doors into how to control rates of obesity nationwide and could ultimately help make the U.S. healthier as a nation. Since this deletion has shown that mice become more active and eat less, maybe the same thing would happen for humans and we could actually become physically fit, with a little help from science! From this article the only questions that really came to mind is how this gene deletion would affect human physiology and whether deleting the gene would cause some sort of adverse affects on other parts of our intricate system? It obviously seems as though much more research must be done before this can come close to being tested on humans, but it sure does sound promising!

Posted by Gabrielle Wertheim (3)