ABSTRACT
Significant advances in our understanding of the regulation of energy balance have been achieved through combining molecular biology and physiology. The initial stimulus driving much of these advances involved the characterization of a small number of spontaneous mouse mutants with altered metabolic phenotypes leading to obesity described in Chapter 3.1. Our understanding of the mechanisms by which genetics maintains body weight is partly due to increased use of transgenic mouse models. The development of technology enabling the manipulation of gene expression, either by over expression or through targeted gene inactivation, has resulted in the creation of many new mutant strains that either develop obesity, or are protected from diet-induced obesity. Transgenic techniques are now widely used for the study of physiological processes and disease states (1).
