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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hippieslayer who wrote (16183)	3/2/1998 5:54:00 AM
From: Henry Niman	Respond to of 32384

Here's more on leptin: W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 27 - The so-called "fat gene," which has been linked with obesity, may also help control puberty, researchers say. The researchers said a Turkish family with an unusual genetic mutation of the leptin gene had several members who were not only extremely obese but showed evidence of disrupted sexual development. Mice who lack the leptin gene are extremely obese, infertile and have other problems including an inability to tolerate the cold. But although some obese people have been shown to have different variants of the leptin gene, they often have too much leptin, not too little. Scientists are still trying to find out just what leptin does, although it seems to have a role in regulating body fat and appetite. Mice-Family Similarity In a letter to the journal Nature Genetics, Andreas Strobel of the University of Paris and colleagues said their studies of more than 200 Turks turned up a family where three members seemed to have the same qualities as leptin-deficient mice. All three had two mutated copies of the leptin gene. One adult man was extremely obese and had very low levels of leptin. He had never entered into puberty and had no beard and very little pubic hair, enlarged breasts and a shrunken penis and testicles. Two women in the family were also extremely obese and had low levels of leptin. They ate almost constantly. One of the women never had menstrual periods, Strobel's team reported. Other members of the family had one or no copies of the gene and had normal body weight and sexual development. "This "suggests that leptin not only controls body mass but may also be a necessary signal for the initiation of human puberty," the researchers wrote.