Beyond mythology and opera: Dido, a gene that regulates weight problems | Health & Wellness | EUROtoday

Obesity, a pathology that impacts a couple of billion individuals in our society and is consistently rising, is characterised by a rise in physique fats, and constitutes a danger issue for a set of illnesses, together with danger of cardiovascular, diabetes, most cancers, stroke, hypertension, COVID, joint issues, and a protracted and so on., which characterize critical limitations within the expectations and high quality of lifetime of the affected individuals. Due to its excessive prevalence, this illness is taken into account by the World Health Organization as a precedence within the subject of public well being and consequently it’s a basic space of ​​analysis.

For this purpose, a multidisciplinary and multicenter group made up of researchers in several Spanish facilities has tackled the examine of the mechanisms concerned within the era of weight problems. A examine carried out by way of using a variety of genomic applied sciences, research of metabolism, biochemistry, huge DNA sequencing, era of genetically modified mice, with the results of the identification of latest mechanisms by way of a gene concerned within the management of it.

The work carried out on the CSIC in collaboration with researchers from the CNIC, and the Rey Juan Carlos University of Alcorcón, and revealed within the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) establish the gene, Dido, essential for the event of adipose tissue. In their work, the authors display the power of this gene to forestall, even in conditions of feeding diets enriched in fats, the era of adipose tissue cells answerable for weight problems. The Dido gene acts by way of mechanisms that regulate the expression of genes important for the metabolic exercise related to the era of fats. This gene, which has been beforehand recognized and studied within the CSIC laboratory for its capacity to take part within the differentiation of embryonic stem cells, thus acquires a brand new perform, its capacity to control the era of adipose tissue.

These outcomes, though they should be taken with warning as a result of they have been obtained in experimental mice, could have necessary therapeutic implications within the management of weight problems and related metabolic pathologies in people, as a result of the examine of the molecular and structural mechanisms already recognized of the Dido gene, open a brand new window for the identification of latest therapeutic compounds with the identical exercise.

In similarity to Dido, queen of Carthage who fails to maintain Aeneas at her facet and decides to finish her life, the presence of mutations on this gene, Dido, which regulates the differentiation of adipocytes, prevents the era and accumulation of those , thus avoiding the formation of fats and consequently stopping weight problems. The mythology of the queen of Carthage, spectacularly captured within the opera Dido and Aeneas by the playwright and poet Nahin Tate and music by Henry Purcel, thus transcends its mythological and cultural function and extends with a brand new imaginative and prescient with its incorporation into science.

Carlos Martínez Alonso He is a researcher within the Department of Immunology and Oncology of the National Center for Biotechnology. He has additionally been president of the CSIC and Secretary of State for Research.

You can comply with EL PAÍS Health and Wellbeing in Facebook, X e Instagram.