New research found that this cancer-causing gene has become the "slimming gene" for those thin people who can't gain weight

If we were to divide the world's people into two categories, in addition to men and women, I believe most people would also be familiar with the division into fat people and thin people.

According to a large-scale research report published by the British medical journal The Lancet in 2014, the proportion of overweight and obese people in the world has increased significantly in the past 30 years, with the total number reaching 2.1 billion, accounting for nearly one-third of the world's total population.

Fat or thin people are not called casually. There is a very simple and crude way to distinguish these two types of people, that is, through the BMI index . BMI is the abbreviation of Body Mass Index, which is currently a commonly used standard internationally to measure the fatness or thinness of the human body. Its calculation formula is:

BMI is generally considered normal when it is between 18 and 24, which means it is a thin group. When BMI ≥ 25, it is considered overweight, and BMI ≥ 30 is considered obese. For example, a person with a height of 1.8 meters is overweight if he weighs more than 81 kilograms; and if the weight reaches 97 kilograms, he can be considered obese.

For fat people and thin people, they are like the idols that both sides admire (maybe not for thin people). The fat people may sweat profusely in the gym every day to lose weight, but the many temptations in the real world make their belly that they have worked hard to lose weight return to its original shape.

On the other side, the thin people also yell all the time: "Hey, I also want to gain some weight, but unfortunately my body is not doing well..."

Of course, after setting this goal, most thin people have already stepped half a foot into the realm of fat people.

However, there are indeed a small number of thin people who will never gain weight no matter how much they eat. They eat a lot and exercise little, but they just can't gain weight.

In that case, if we “catch” these thin people who “will never gain weight no matter how much they eat” and study them, can we change the difficult situation of fat people?

In fact, some people have already done this. Recently, a paper published online in the top academic journal Cell found the secret of why these thin people don't get fat.

Unlike many previous studies that have focused on obesity and the genetics of obesity , this time the researchers did not look for factors that make people more likely to become obese. Instead, they studied how to make people thinner.

After deciding on the idea, the researchers used 471.02 million genome data from the Estonian Biobank, one of the world's largest databases of genomes for both common and rare diseases.

DNA samples stored in cryogenic chamber

The data obtained here can avoid obesity or emaciation caused by disease to the greatest extent, so as to truly study the secrets of thin people themselves.

Then, based on the distribution of body mass index (BMI), the researchers defined thin people as the 6% with the lowest BMI and excluded people with lipodystrophy or anorexia nervosa. In the end, less than 2% of the healthy population was classified as thin, and the remaining 3% served as controls.

By comparing the DNA samples and clinical test data of the thin group with those of the standard weight control group, it was found that the first intron of the ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase) gene in the thin group had a genetic mutation.

Here is a brief introduction to what the ALK gene is. The biggest feature of this gene is that it often mutates in various types of cancer, so it is also called an oncogene.

Many previous studies on this gene have been limited to cancer, but this new discovery suggests that the ALK gene may also be related to thinness.

The excited researchers immediately found two "good hands" for experiments - fruit flies and mice, and tested the effect of ALK gene on weight loss in them.

First, in fruit flies, after reducing the expression of ALK through RNA interference, the triglyceride levels of fruit flies decreased regardless of whether they consumed a normal diet or a high-sugar diet, indicating that their metabolism had changed.

In mice, the researchers deleted some of the ALK gene code segments to cause mutations. Then they fed the mice a diet equivalent to the calories of a KFC bucket for 16 consecutive weeks. The results showed that the mutant mice did not undergo significant changes in appearance, tissue morphology, appetite, etc., and their bodies remained very thin. Normal mice had become very obese.

Through experiments on fruit flies and mice, the researchers initially determined that ALK gene mutations reduce obesity caused by diet. In the future, the research team will further understand the regulation and expression of ALK gene by the hypothalamus at the molecular level, thus providing new ideas for personalized treatment of obesity.

For example, using targeted therapy for the ALK gene can help obese patients control their weight by inhibiting the expression of the ALK gene . This treatment may not take long, after all, targeted ALK inhibitors are already used in cancer treatment.

It seems that the spring of fat people is finally coming?