Mapping the road to obesity
By creating a “map” of histone modifications in fat cells, investigators have discovered two new factors that regulate fat formation, a key step on the road to better understanding obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disorders. Led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, the study appears in the October issue of the journal Cell. “These findings help to demonstrate the power of epigenomic mapping when it comes to gleaning key insights into fat cell formation,” explains senior author Evan Rosen, an investigator in the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at BIDMC and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Fat cells, also called adipocytes, play an integral role in regulating metabolism by controlling lipid and glucose balance. To better understand how adipocytes control the genes that impart the specialized functions of these cells, the researchers turned to epigenomics, and...