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Functional Follow-up of Genetic Variants Using FTO as the Prime Example

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The Genetics of Obesity

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Abstract

Obesity is the result of lifestyle and genetic predisposition. Tens of genes have been found to be associated with obesity. Among those, FTO showed the highest effect on body weight, but the function of the gene product was unknown at the time of discovering this association. As a consequence, several hundreds of studies have now been performed in just the last 6 years to unravel the biological role of FTO as an obesity gene. Although FTO is very likely to act as a RNA demethylase, the process by which FTO influences body weight is still unknown. In this review we have collected and evaluated most of the recent results which contribute to the relatively small but nevertheless important progress in FTO research with respect to obesity.

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Abbreviations

BMI:

Body mass index

CUX1:

Cut-like homeobox 1

FTO:

Fat mass and obesity associated

GWAS:

Genome-wide association studies

m6A:

N6-methyladenosine

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

alkB:

Alpha-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenase

ALKBH:

Mammalian alkB homolog

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Cindy Thron and Renate Dildrop for their help in the context of manuscript preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Animal Developmental and Molecular Biology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Stefanie Seehaus & Ulrich Rüther

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  1. Stefanie Seehaus
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  2. Ulrich Rüther
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Correspondence to Ulrich Rüther .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Struan F.A. Grant

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Seehaus, S., Rüther, U. (2014). Functional Follow-up of Genetic Variants Using FTO as the Prime Example. In: Grant, S. (eds) The Genetics of Obesity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8642-8_7

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