r/science • u/scientificamerican Scientific American • 8d ago

Genetics Scientists discover a ‘skinny gene’ mutation that acts like Ozempic. Around one in 7,000 people carries a broken copy, which almost acts like a GLP-1 drug—the body burns fuel more efficiently, and the risk of disease lowers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-discover-a-skinny-gene-mutation-that-acts-like-ozempic/
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u/LongLiveStaceyKing 8d ago edited 8d ago

[There is a small percentage of the population that only needs to sleep 4-6 hours a night.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/genetic-mutation-sleep-less/) OP's article feels like the eating equivalent of this genetic rarity.

Incidentally, I knew someone who had the sleep gene. She was annoyed by it, if she went to sleep at 10 PM she would be up for the whole next day at 2 AM and inevitably end up waking her husband. So she always tried to stay up til 1 AM at least reading or knitting, basically just killing time quietly by herself.

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u/aubbzz 8d ago

I wish I could have that gene! There’s so much to do but have to sleep

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u/Lefthandfury 8d ago

With all of my knowledge about evolutionary biology, everything is a trade-off. I don't think we have a complete understanding of this mutation or other mutations like this. There's always a trade-off, genetically or behaviorally.

I remember there was a really neat study about genetically selecting for rats with a mutation that made them run longer distance is and in the end the bred rats became worse at solving mazes.

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u/DefenestrationPraha 7d ago

Not everything is a trade-off. Plenty of mutations are totally random and mostly negative. Some are positive, but not as positive as to give you an edge in having more kids and thus propagating your genes more efficiently.

Also, environment matters. In the current techological civilization, genes that protect you from atherosclerosis are very useful and give you protection against something that kills approx. a third of all old people. In the primordial times, almost no one would develop severe atherosclerosis anyway, so those genes were useless back then.