A May 2021 study by Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said,
"One of the biggest challenges we face is trying to understand how people develop obesity. If we can understand that, we can develop solutions for treating or preventing these diseases,"
"Our previous studies showed that Brd4 [a regulator of the innate immune response] plays an important role in the innate immune response, so we were trying to understand how it influences the development of diseases such as obesity,"
"We observed that after several weeks of the high-fat diet, the normal mice became obese while the mice lacking Brd4 did not. They also had reduced inflammation and higher metabolic rates,"
"We know that bacteria in the gut can sometimes trigger diet-induced obesity. We're currently working with our MME theme members in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology to figure out how Brd4 modulates microbes to do that,"