"Worm Screening" In Obesity Study, A Way Of Finding New Targets For Human Diseases

More lessons for us to learn from animals. For a more complete list of animals that are teaching us lessons, see the end of the post.

Researchers exploring human metabolism at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have uncovered a handful of chemical compounds that regulate fat storage in worms, offering a new tool for understanding obesity and finding future treatments for diseases associated with obesity.

As described in a paper published this month in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, the UCSF team took armies of microscopic worms called C.elegans and exposed them to thousands of different chemical compounds. Giving these compounds to the worms, they discovered, basically made them skinnier or fatter without affecting how they eat, grow, or reproduce.

Here are more animal mentors:

Flies:



Rodents:



The Fruit fly (more):



Birds:



Worms:



Marmots:

Lemurs:



Even more lessons to be learned from the expanding fatso menagerie.



But, why bother? The only animal you need is: