While the scientists have already been aware of several genes that can be linked to obesity in a person, it is apparently for the first time that they have been able to identify a ‘skinny’ gene --- one that is possessed by thin people! 
According to a report published in the journal Nature, scientists at Imperial College, London, and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, have found that discovered that thin people have extra copies of certain genes. Incidentally, the same team of researchers had discovered last year that people with the gene deletions had a 43 times more chance of being clinically obese. 
The researchers, in the new report, have highlighted that a person’s genetic propensity to be fat or thin is supposedly a result of opposite chromosomal mistakes --- whereby a gene might either be abnormally active or not active enough! 
About the new findings, chief scientist Professor Philippe Froguel - from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London – said that they are the among the first examples of “a deletion and a duplication of one part of the genome (genetic code) having opposite effects.” 
Revealing that the next move of the research team will be learn more about the genes involved in regulating appetite, by sequencing the genes and finding out what they do, Froguel said: “If we can work out why gene duplication causes thinness, it might throw up new potential treatments for obesity and appetite disorder”!