Well, I was pretty excited! We found the master switch. Just a matter of a few seconds before we can turn it off, right?
In this case the master switch is a locus area on the DNA of fat cells that sets off a cascade event in other areas and starts the whole obesity process. But “we found an area of DNA that affects a bunch of other areas” is not as sexy a title as “master switch.” Switches can be turned off.  It is highly unlikely that we’ll be plucking out a chunk of our DNA anytime soon. Â
Here’s the exciting article from Right Health.com. They got it from Medline plus. Here’s the original abstract from medline, which is a lot less sexy. And here is another relevant article (you can read the whole thing for free, which is a sure cure for insomnia). I’ll quote the title so you get a sense that, no, we won’t be “turning off” our fat genes anytime soon: “Forty-three loci associated with plasma lipoprotein size, concentration, and cholesterol content in genome-wide analysis.” Yep, that’s a lot of genes. Even though we’ve got one of the major players, it’s likely the others have some impact on obesity.Â
Related articles
- Scientists Discover An Obesity ‘Master Switch’ [Science] (gawker.com)
- ‘Master switch’ gene for diabetes, obesity found (healthzone.ca)
- Scientists Find “Master Switch” Gene for Obesity (nlm.nih.gov)
- Scientists find ‘master switch’ for obesity (theprovince.com)
- ‘Master switch’ for obesity, diabetes found (msnbc.msn.com)
- Scientists Find Genetic ‘Switch’ For Obesity (huffingtonpost.com)
- ‘Master switch’ gene for obesity and diabetes discovered (scienceblog.com)
- Obesity Master Switch Gene Found (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Discovery Of ‘Master Switch’ Gene For Obesity And Diabetes (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Hondo runs with ‘dogs (nypost.com)
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