Is obesity all in your head? New research suggests genes predispose people to obesity act in the brain and that some people may simply be hardwired to overeat.
An international team of researchers, co-led by the University of Michigan, found six new genes that help explain body mass index and obesity, and all but one of the genes are tied to the brain rather than to metabolic functions, such as fat storage and sugar metabolism.
Scientists have known for a long time now that messing with the 24-hour circadian rhythm plays havoc with the lives and health of medical, military and airline personnel, factory employees, and travelers.
A new paper by University of Notre Dame biologist Giles Duffield and a team of researchers sheds new light on circadian timing systems and focuses on a key gene that seems to regulate the response of the circadian clock to light signals.
Tributyltin, a ubiquitous pollutant that has a potent effect on gene activity, could be promoting obesity, according to an article in the December issue of BioScience. The chemical is used in antifouling paints for boats, as a wood and textile preservative, and as a pesticide on high-value food crops, among many other applications.
Affecting sensitive receptors in the cells of animals, from water fleas to humans, tributyltin can, at very low concentrations — a thousand times lower than pollutants that are known to interfere with sexual development of wildlife species.
University of California at Irvine researchers have found a molecular link between circadian rhythms — our own body clock — and metabolism. The discovery reveals new possibilities for the treatment of diabetes, obesity and other related diseases.
Paolo Sassone-Corsi, distinguished professor and chair of Pharmacology, and his colleagues have identified that an essential protein called CLOCK that regulates the body’s circadian rhythms, works in balance with another protein called SIRT1 that modulates how much energy a cell uses.
Researchers studying three families with the same unusual sleep pattern have uncovered the first hereditary sleep disorder in humans caused by a single gene. Neurologist Christopher Jones and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Louis Ptácek, both at the University of Utah, are now searching for the gene that causes the disorder known as familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS).
Ptácek and his colleagues concluded that a single gene was responsible for FASPS by studying how the condition was passed along from one generation to the next within the affected families. In this case, inheritance seemed to follow the same simple pattern seen with other single gene traits, such as eye color.
Researchers who had bred a group of mice in hopes of learning more about a brain hormone that stimulates appetite got a bit of a surprise when they saw that the rodents would suddenly collapse and fall fast asleep with no provocation. As a result, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Masashi Yanagisawa and colleagues at the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have an exciting new lead into the genesis of sleep and the origins of narcolepsy, a severe sleep disorder in humans.
In 1998, Yanagisawa discovered the orexins, small brain proteins and their receptors that regulate feeding behavior in mice. To probe the role that orexins play in regulating appetite, Yanagisawa and his colleagues developed a strain of knockout mice whose orexin genes do not function properly.
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As of May 2, 2009 at 9:47 p.m. (-0500) (ET), the U.S. population
was 306,340,710. Sleep researchers estimate approximately seven percent
of the population suffers from obstructive sleep apnea. Using that
estimate, there are potentially 21,443,850 apneics in the U.S.
~~ Apnea around the world ~~
As of May 2, 2009 at 9:47 p.m. (-0500) (ET), the world population
was 6,777,286,604. Sleep researchers estimate approximately seven percent
of the population suffers from obstructive sleep apnea. Using that
estimate, there are potentially 474,410,062 apneics in the world.
