J Genomics 2012; 1:45-55. doi:10.7150/jgen.3996

Research Paper

Obesity Gene Atlas in Mammals

Tanja Kunej^1*✉, Dasa Jevsinek Skok^1*, Minja Zorc^1,2*, Ana Ogrinc¹, Jennifer J. Michal³, Milena Kovac¹, Zhihua Jiang^3✉

1. Department of Animal Science, Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Domzale, Slovenia;
2. Centre for Mathematical and Computational Biology, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Herts, AL5, 2JQ, UK;
3. Department of Animal Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-6351, USA.
* Authors contributed equally to the work.

Abstract

Obesity in humans has increased at an alarming rate over the past two decades and has become one of the leading public health problems worldwide. Studies have revealed a large number of genes/markers that are associated with obesity and/or obesity-related phenotypes, indicating an urgent need to develop a central database for helping the community understand the genetic complexity of obesity. In the present study, we collected a total of 1,736 obesity associated loci and created a freely available obesity database, including 1,515 protein-coding genes and 221 microRNAs (miRNAs) collected from four mammalian species: human, cattle, rat, and mouse. These loci were integrated as orthologs on comparative genomic views in human, cattle, and mouse. The database and genomic views are freely available online at: http://www.integratomics-time.com/fat_deposition. Bioinformatics analyses of the collected data revealed some potential novel obesity related molecular markers which represent focal points for testing more targeted hypotheses and designing experiments for further studies. We believe that this centralized database on obesity and adipogenesis will facilitate development of comparative systems biology approaches to address this important health issue in human and their potential applications in animals.

Keywords: adipogenesis, fat deposition, integratomics, mammals, microRNA (miRNA), obesity.