Novel brown adipose tissue candidate genes predicted by the human gene connectome

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a promising therapeutic target against obesity. Therefore, research on the genetic architecture of BAT could be key for the development of successful therapies against this complex phenotype. Hypothesis-driven candidate gene association studies are useful for studying genetic determinants of complex traits, but they are dependent upon the previous knowledge to select candidate genes. Here, we predicted 107 novel-BAT candidate genes in silico using the uncoupling protein one (UCP1) as the hallmark of BAT activity. We first identified the top 1% of human genes predicted by the human gene connectome to be biologically closest to the UCP1, estimating 167 additional pathway genes (BAT connectome). We validated this prediction by showing that 60 genes already associated with BAT were included in the connectome and they were biologically closer to each other than expected by chance (p -16 ). The rest of genes (107) are potential candidates for BAT, being also closer to known BAT genes and more expressed in BAT biopsies than expected by chance (p -16 ; p = 4.39 × 10 -02 ). The resulting new list of predicted human BAT genes should be useful for the discovery of novel BAT genes and metabolic pathways.

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

Browse all related research

Filter the research library by this study's title keywords, author, or publication year.