We are doing a longitudinal study looking at the tongue size of lean and obese zucker rats after they gain weight. We were hoping to look at a couple of different genes to study the difference and add a genetic aspect to our study.
Does anyone have any idea of what would be some good candidate genes to study expression? I think that Genes that have to do with transport, liver, weight, etc would all be good ones, but I am not too well versed in this.
Thank you!
If you are interested in the tongue then why not look at the expression of taste-related genes? A start would be Tas1r1, Tas1r2, and Tas1r3 (responsible for sweet and umami tastes), plus some Tas2r's (responsible for bitter tastes).
Thank you for your feedback. Yes, our main objective is to study the tongue, but our focus is more on how fat gets into the tongue.
I will discuss looking at taste with my PI because that may be an interesting and novel idea.
Do you have any recommendations of certain fat transporters or other genes that would be associated with fat in the tongue?
CD36 and GPR120 would be a good start. There is a lovely recent review of fat taste by Besnard et al. It includes a comprehensive treatment of all (potential) fat taste genes.
Besnard P; Passilly-Degrace P; Khan NA. Taste of fat: A sixth taste modality? Physiol Rev 96:151-176; 2016.
MGT
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