<p>But she may not be in the future as developmental scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered a molecular switch that determines how fat you are.Switch on: no fat cells develop. Switch off: all cells turn to fat. And Wnt 10B is the fattest of them all.Wnts [pronounced “wints”] are a group of related proteins that are known to affect stem cell development. Stem cells in embryos develop into precursor cells which in turn morph into differentiated cells. All stem cells are identical. Precursor cells show some characteristics of the eventual cells that they will become [for example, muscle and fat cells have as their pre-cursors myoblasts and praedipocytes respectively].Working with mouse muscle and mouse fat precursor cells in culture form, the scientists found that without Wnts both types of precursor cell differentiated into fat cells. Of the 18 known Wnts the tests concluded that it was probable that Wnt 10B was the molecule most likely to be responsible for the regulation. “This is the first piece of the puzzle but it is an important one.” commented Dr Ormond Macdougald, the director of the study, “this suggests that active Wnt signalling is required for continued commitment to the myocyte lineage.“So far only mouse cell culture has been used. The next stage is to run the tests on living mice. McDougald added: “Our goal is to make the world’s first fat free mouse.”</p>
Ya Mama’s So Fat ...
