BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Targeting mahogany

March 15, 1999 8:00 AM UTC

The most straightforward mechanism for a small molecule therapeutic agent is to inactivate the product of a single gene. However for diseases with a complex genetic basis it may be difficult to identify a single "slam dunk" target. Thus the identification and cloning of the mahogany gene by researchers at Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Stanford University and colleagues may provide MLNM with a new target to prevent or treat obesity, but for the moment it mostly raises new questions about the complexity of the condition.

As described in Nature, mutations in the mahogany gene prevented diet-induced obesity in mice, and suppressed some (but not all) mutations that cause mice to be obese ( see B12). ...