Scientists have recently got success in knowing how actually the obesity gene makes people fat. It a vital discovery that could give to provide an entirely new approach to the problem beyond diet and exercise, said study scientists.

As per experiments, a faulty version of the gene stores the energy from the food rather than burning it. Researchers said genetic tinkering in mice and on human cells in the lab experiment have suggested that the process can be reversed.

The findings of the study have given new hopes that a drug or other treatment might be developed that could reverse the fat storage done by gene.

The work was led by scientists at MIT and Harvard University and published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

As per the study leader Melina Claussnitzer, a genetics specialist at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the new discovery challenges the old belief that people get obese because of their own choice of eating too much or not exercising.

But this is for the first time when genetics has revealed a mechanism in obesity that was not really suspected before and gives a third explanation or factor that’s involved.

Dr. Clifford Rosen, a scientist at Maine Medical Center Research Institute and an associate editor at the medical journal, said, “Lot of people think obesity epidemic is all about eating too much, but our fat cells play role in how food gets used. With this discovery, you now have pathway for drugs that can make those fat cells work differently”.