“By studying dogs, we’ve honed in on some interesting new biology here,” explained lead researcher Dr Eleanor Raffan from the University of Cambridge’s department of physiology, development and neuroscience. <\/p>\n
She added that the discovery showed that “owners of slim dogs are not morally superior – and the same is true of slim people”. <\/p>\n
“If you have a high genetic risk of obesity, you’re prone to gaining weight unless you put a huge effort into not doing so. And those with low genetic risk just don’t have to work so hard.”<\/p>\n
This canine-human biological link came from the researchers’ examination of the genetics of 250 labradors. The team looked for pieces of genetic code that were common in overweight dogs. <\/p>\n
They picked out one gene in particular – called DENND1B – that was associated with a higher body mass in the labradors. And when they searched through a library of genetic information from thousands of humans, they discovered that the same gene was associated with a higher body mass in people, too. <\/p>\n
Before this study of labrador genetics, Dr Raffan said, “no one suspected that gene had anything to do with obesity”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“By studying dogs, we’ve honed in on some interesting new biology here,” explained lead researcher Dr Eleanor Raffan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3846],"tags":[267,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-243870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-genetics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114808923291326823","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}