Genetic Approach to Human Obesity

Yang, Seung

Abstract

Increasing rate of childhood obesity is one of the social health problems in Korea. The mechanisms of fat accumulation and maintenance are not clear yet. Genetic, environmental, behavioral and socioeconomic factors in individuals might cause very heterogenous phenotypic expressions of obesity. In the aspect of genetic factors, there are two types of obesity; monogenic (single mutations) and polygenic obesity (known as common obesity). The completion of human genome project contributed to genetic study for obesity and many candidate genes associated with obesity were found in the past couple of years. However, the functional study of those genes was little performed. The trials to reveal the effect of each gene are required, because the more genes are studied, the better the mechanisms of obesity can be understood.