Scientists looked to a group of people of different races to learn more about the way certain genes affect weight.
Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Informatics conducted a study that looked at data collected in 2000 from a large group of people. They uncovered 45 genes related to Body Mass Index (BMI) – which is how overweight or underweight someone is. These new findings might offer some helpful insights into obesity, and many of these genes had never been researched before!
Luciana Vargas, a Ph.D. student from CU School of Medicine, says the new study she and her team did is special because it used directly measured gene expression data. This can help us understand more about obesity and find potential biomarkers or treatments for it.
Two scientists, Ethan and Leslie Lange, used data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) to do a study. When MESA started, it asked over 6,000 people across America to gather information about things that can cause heart problems. Then they give their health details every now and then. Because of the big number of people and different ethnicities involved in this study, lots of other researchers have used this data for their work too. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute also wanted to look at how genes may affect diseases so they created TOPMed which took data from some MESA participants plus others from outside MESA.
‘Omics is a fancy way to describe changes in special molecules that exist in our bodies, like genes, proteins and RNA. Iain Konigsberg and Vargas wanted to investigate further by using the MESA cohort – which is a group of people with lots of measurements taken from them and connected carefully over time. They need funding for this though and also need to keep track of participants to take their blood samples for their study.
Scientists looked at the data from four groups of people – African American, Chinese American, Hispanic, and White – and tried to figure out if their genes affect their body-mass index (BMI). Since many risks related to heart disease also apply to obesity, using the MESA cohort was really helpful.
Scientists recently discovered 45 genes which have something to do with a person’s weight. Only a few of these genes had been found before, but the research team made some new discoveries too!
Konigsberg believes that more diversity in obesity research will help us learn more, so they conducted a study using MESA and additional human cohorts. Vargas started as a Ph.D. student at CU Anschutz in Fall 2021 and this is her first paper published from the Leslie Lange’s Lab and it has been a great opportunity for her to collaborate on research with others.
She says that joining the TOPMed consortium, which had included thousands of people from all around the United States, gave her amazing research prospects. She highlighted how beneficial it is to work together on projects.
