ILLINOIS - Few people want to be obese, but growing numbers are, and the problem is proving increasingly difficult to conquer. Obesity is obviously associated with taking in more calories than a person burns off. But fighting fat also means understanding how and why it develops, and two new studies have taken a giant step in coming up with some ideas. The studies, published in January 1
The studies showed that a steroid hormone receptor protein - the peroxysome proliferator-activated receptor g (PPAR-γ), specifically an isoform of the protein called PPAR-γ-2 - enables laboratory-grown fat cell precursors to form fat cells in response to signaling molecules. Earlier work had shown that gene-regulatory ...