Lessons in obesity from transgenic animals

Many genetic manipulations have created models of obesity, leanness or resistance to dietary obesity in mice, often providing insights into molecular mechanisms that affect energy balance, and new targets for anti-obesity drugs. Since many genes can affect energy balance in mice, polymorphisms in many genes may also contribute to obesity in humans, and there may be many causes of primary leptin resistance. Secondary leptin resistance (due to high leptin levels) can be investigated by combining the ob mutation with other obesity genes. Some transgenic mice have failed to display the expected phenotype, or have even been obese when leanness was expected. Compensatory changes in the expression of other genes during development, or opposing influences of the gene on energy balance, especially in global knockout mice, may offer explanations for such findings. Obesity has been separated from insulin resistance in some transgenic strains, providing new insights into the mechanisms that usually link these phenotypes. It has also been shown that in some transgenic mice, obesity develops without hyperphagia, or leanness without hypophagia, demonstrating that generalised physiological explanations for obesity in individual humans may be inappropriate. Possibly the most important transgenic model of obesity so far created is the Type 1 11ß-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase over-expressing mouse, since this models the metabolic syndrome in humans. The perspectives into obesity offered by transgenic mouse models should assist clinical researchers in the design and interpretation of their studies in human obesity.