With an estimated 20 million Americans suffering from the effects of obesity, UW-Madison researchers' discovery of a gene regulating fat storage may lead to future treatment options. Obesity has been linked to other health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
UW-Madison biochemistry and nutritional sciences professor James Ntambi and colleagues studied animals lacking the SCD-1 gene which produces an enzyme, SCD, necessary for fat storage. Animals lacking the gene and animals with a functional gene were both fed high-fat diets.
\The idea was to make them fat but the mice lacking the SCD-1 gene never got up there despite a diet that contained nearly 15 percent fat,"" Ntambi said. ""What we found is that when you feed these animals a high-fat diet for several weeks, they fail to accumulate fat over time.""
In addition to the favorable effect of decreased fat storage, mice lacking both functional copies of the SCD-1 gene experienced negative side effects such as skin and eye problems. Animals with half of the normal level of the SCD-1 enzyme appear normal.
Ntambi theorizes that drug therapies may be developed that block the fat-storage effects of the SCD-1 gene without the undesired side effects.
