Gene produces hormones that lead to obesity

(PhysOrg.com) -- Obesity and common weight gain share a genetic basis. Professor Philippe Froguel, from Imperial College in Great Britain, and his team from the laboratoire Génomique et physiologie moléculaire des maladies métaboliques (CNRS/ Université Lille 2 / Institut Pasteur de Lille), in collaboration with teams from Inserm and Danish, Swiss and German partners, have discovered a new obesity gene that plays an essential role in the maturation of several key hormones that control food intake.