{"id":21870,"date":"2016-02-10T02:48:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T10:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/scientists-say-theyve-found-a-genetic-switch-that-could-turn-obesity-on-or-off"},"modified":"2017-04-24T22:30:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:30:52","slug":"scientists-say-theyve-found-a-genetic-switch-that-could-turn-obesity-on-or-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/scientists-say-theyve-found-a-genetic-switch-that-could-turn-obesity-on-or-off","title":{"rendered":"Scientists say they\u2019ve found a genetic \u2018switch\u2019 that could turn obesity on or off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-say-theyve-found-a-genetic-switch-that-could-turn-obesity-on-or-off.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s still much that we don\u2019t understand about obesity and its underlying causes, but scientists in Germany say they\u2019ve discovered a genetic \u2018switch\u2019 that could effectively turn obesity on or off.<\/p>\n<p>The new report is based on epigenetics research \u2014 that is, the way the genes in our bodies change based on chemical and environmental factors, rather than modifications in the fundamental DNA genetic code itself. We\u2019re all born with a certain set of genes, but these can be turned on or off, or dialled up or down, though processes inside the body (it\u2019s part of the reason why identical twins don\u2019t always look identical).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s one of these epigenetic tags that the scientists have identified, and it works like a light switch rather than a dimmer. \u201cOnce the switch is triggered, it is a lifelong, epigenetically-driven decision that ends in a stable, either a lean or obese phenotype,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mpg.de\/9910690\/epigenetic-switch-obesity\">lead author Andrew Pospisilik<\/a> from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics. \u201cThe effect is akin to a light switch \u2014 on or off, lean or obese. Typically, we usually consider epigenetic control of disease to act much more like a dimmer, shifting phenotypes like body weight up or down gradually.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/scientists-think-they-ve-found-a-genetic-switch-to-turn-obesity-on-or-off\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s still much that we don\u2019t understand about obesity and its underlying causes, but scientists in Germany say they\u2019ve discovered a genetic \u2018switch\u2019 that could effectively turn obesity on or off. The new report is based on epigenetics research \u2014 that is, the way the genes in our bodies change based on chemical and environmental [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51054,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21870\/revisions\/51054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}