Posted on 04/04/2003 9:38:54 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Genetically fattened flies may help humans lose weight, a German scientist said on Thursday.
New research on the Drosophila fruit fly at Germany's Max-Planck Institute in Goettingen has established a link between fat storage mechanisms in insects and mammals.
Project leader Ronald Kuehnlein said examining flies was providing valuable insights into how fats are processed.
"Our findings establish a common basis for how fat cells are integrated in mammals and insects. If we find further genetic ties between flies and mammals on fat regulation it could have serious implications for fat control," said Kuehnlein.
Kuehnlein discovered that flies that had been genetically mutated into lacking a protein regulating fat storage were thin, while those modified to overproduce it were fat.
He added that the mutations had had no adverse effect on the health of the flies. An earlier study on fat-regulating proteins in mammals carried out on mice produced similar results.
The advantage of working with flies is that they yield much quicker results.
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