Former UBC Postdoc and current research associate Gareth Lim is part of the research team that has identified an obesity gene.
“People gain fat in two ways – through the multiplication of their fat cells, and through the expansion of individual fat cells,” said Gareth Lim, a postdoctoral fellow in UBC’s Life Sciences Institute. “This protein affects both the number of cells and how big they are, by playing a role in the growth cycle of these cells.”
Lim and James Johnson, a professor of cellular and physiological sciences, began investigating the 14-3-3 family of proteins four years ago as it often shows up in the unhealthy fat tissue of obese people. This study not only identified zeta as the operative protein, but demonstrated a clear cause-and-effect between 14-3-3zeta and fat accumulation.
Excerpted from the full article published on news.ubc.ca
http://news.ubc.ca/2015/08/10/ubc-scientists-discover-possible-obesity-gene/