Researchers Find A Gene For Obesity
A Fat Pig via Flickr user Clemson Researchers at the University of Copenhagen set out on what seemed like a simple task: to find out if overeating is linked to any genetic difference. Four years and 1,200 pigs later (yeah, we'll get to that), they have an answer. Monitoring human eating habits is highly difficult; over a period of years, no human would be willing to have every single item of food they eat be studied and recorded by scientists. So these researchers turned to the pig, which has a very similar gastrointestinal system as well as a similar genomic structure, to find out. Pigs, after all, don't much care whether you're looking at them and taking notes as they eat. Over four years, 1,200 pigs were given nearly unlimited access to food to see how much they'd eat, how often,...