In this short
article, it discusses how investigators from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have found a "switch" (in mice) that can accelerate a person's basal metabolic rate, which could lead to the decrease of obesity and diabetes. The research involves "turning off" a gene that encodes for a protein called nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT). The gene was turned off using antisense oligonucleotide technology, which can be designed to prevent the synthesis of specific proteins. This allowed the researches to interrupt only the expression of the gene in fat cells and the liver. This protein has also been linked to some forms of cancer. If this research turns out to be applicable to people, those who have "slow metabolism" could use this discovery as a great equalizer. This seems like a quick and easy fix but there is no telling what the negative short term or long term ramifications could be by turning off this, or any other gene. Before they try this on people I think there needs to be some longitudinal type studies to ensure that turning off a gene does not cause some other catastrophic failure within the body.
Pretty interesting, but I do also agree with need for a longitudinal as the negative effects (both short term and long term) haven't been really studied.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting research. Although the study seems to have a lot of positive effects, there needs to be more research to discover if there are negative effects.
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