Skip to main content
Advertisement

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About DMM
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contact
    • Contact DMM
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

User menu

  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
Disease Models & Mechanisms
  • COB
    • About The Company of Biologists
    • Development
    • Journal of Cell Science
    • Journal of Experimental Biology
    • Disease Models & Mechanisms
    • Biology Open

supporting biologistsinspiring biology

Disease Models & Mechanisms

Advanced search

RSS   Twitter   Facebook   YouTube

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Accepted manuscripts
    • Issue in progress
    • Latest complete issue
    • Issue archive
    • Archive by article type
    • Subject collections
    • Interviews
    • Sign up for alerts
  • About us
    • About DMM
    • Editors and Board
    • Editor biographies
    • Travelling Fellowships
    • Grants and funding
    • Journal Meetings
    • Workshops
    • The Company of Biologists
    • Journal news
  • For authors
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Aims and scope
    • Presubmission enquiries
    • Article types
    • Manuscript preparation
    • Cover suggestions
    • Editorial process
    • Promoting your paper
    • Open Access
    • Outstanding paper prize
    • Biology Open transfer
  • Journal info
    • Journal policies
    • Rights and permissions
    • Media policies
    • Reviewer guide
    • Sign up for alerts
  • Contact
    • Contact DMM
    • Advertising
    • Feedback
Special Article
The evolution of human adiposity and obesity: where did it all go wrong?
Jonathan C. K. Wells
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2012 5: 595-607; doi: 10.1242/dmm.009613
Jonathan C. K. Wells
1Childhood Nutrition Research Centre, UCL Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1EH, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: Jonathan.Wells@ucl.ac.uk
  • Article
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Abstract

Because obesity is associated with diverse chronic diseases, little attention has been directed to the multiple beneficial functions of adipose tissue. Adipose tissue not only provides energy for growth, reproduction and immune function, but also secretes and receives diverse signaling molecules that coordinate energy allocation between these functions in response to ecological conditions. Importantly, many relevant ecological cues act on growth and physique, with adiposity responding as a counterbalancing risk management strategy. The large number of individual alleles associated with adipose tissue illustrates its integration with diverse metabolic pathways. However, phenotypic variation in age, sex, ethnicity and social status is further associated with different strategies for storing and using energy. Adiposity therefore represents a key means of phenotypic flexibility within and across generations, enabling a coherent life-history strategy in the face of ecological stochasticity. The sensitivity of numerous metabolic pathways to ecological cues makes our species vulnerable to manipulative globalized economic forces. The aim of this article is to understand how human adipose tissue biology interacts with modern environmental pressures to generate excess weight gain and obesity. The disease component of obesity might lie not in adipose tissue itself, but in its perturbation by our modern industrialized niche. Efforts to combat obesity could be more effective if they prioritized ‘external’ environmental change rather than attempting to manipulate ‘internal’ biology through pharmaceutical or behavioral means.

Footnotes

  • This article is part of a special issue on obesity: see related articles in Vol. 5, issue 5 of Dis. Model. Mech. at http://dmm.biologists.org/content/5/5.toc.

  • COMPETING INTERESTS

    The author declares that he does not have any competing or financial interests.

  • FUNDING

    This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

  • © 2012. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly cited and all further distributions of the work or adaptation are subject to the same Creative Commons License terms.

View Full Text
Previous ArticleNext Article
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

This Issue

RSSRSS

 Download PDF

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Disease Models & Mechanisms.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
The evolution of human adiposity and obesity: where did it all go wrong?
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Disease Models & Mechanisms
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Disease Models & Mechanisms web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Special Article
The evolution of human adiposity and obesity: where did it all go wrong?
Jonathan C. K. Wells
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2012 5: 595-607; doi: 10.1242/dmm.009613
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Special Article
The evolution of human adiposity and obesity: where did it all go wrong?
Jonathan C. K. Wells
Disease Models & Mechanisms 2012 5: 595-607; doi: 10.1242/dmm.009613

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Alerts

Please log in to add an alert for this article.

Sign in to email alerts with your email address

Article navigation

  • Top
  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Introduction
    • Influential but insufficient approaches
    • Adiposity and risk management
    • The genetics of adiposity
    • What environment shaped human adiposity?
    • Adipose tissue as a strategy
    • Fitness functions of fat
    • Risk management in operation: the long view
    • Risk management in operation: the short view
    • Where is the disease of obesity located?
    • Risk management meets political economy
    • Conclusion
    • Footnotes
    • REFERENCES
  • Figures & tables
  • Info & metrics
  • PDF

Related articles

Cited by...

More in this TOC section

  • Mouse models of myocardial infarction: comparing permanent ligation and ischaemia-reperfusion
  • Cell and animal models of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis and immunity
  • Translational medicine in neuromuscular disorders: from academia to industry
Show more SPECIAL ARTICLE

Similar articles

Other journals from The Company of Biologists

Development

Journal of Cell Science

Journal of Experimental Biology

Biology Open

Advertisement

DMM and COVID-19

We are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented impact on researchers worldwide. The Editors of all The Company of Biologists’ journals have been considering ways in which we can alleviate concerns that members of our community may have around publishing activities during this time. Read about the actions we are taking at this time.

Please don’t hesitate to contact the Editorial Office if you have any questions or concerns.


The twin pillars of Disease Models & Mechanisms

In her first Editorial as Editor-in-Chief, Liz Patton sets out her vision and priorities for DMM focusing on four thematic challenges: mechanisms of disease, innovative technologies, disease progression through time and therapy.


Extended deadline - The RAS Pathway: Diseases, Therapeutics and Beyond

Our upcoming special issue is welcoming submissions until 3 May 2021. Guest-edited by Donita Brady (Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, USA) and Arvin Dar (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA), the issue will focus on the targeting the RAS pathway.

Find out more about the issue and how to submit your manuscript.


Perspective - Modelling the developmental origins of paediatric cancer to improve patient outcomes

James Amatruda authors our first Perspective, discussing some of the key challenges in paediatric cancer from his perspective as a physician-scientist.


A muscle growth-promoting treatment based on the attenuation of activin/myostatin signalling results in long-term testicular abnormalities

In this issue’s Editor’s choice, Ketan Patel and colleagues describe how even brief exposure to muscle-growth-promoting treatments exerts a long-term detrimental effect on the testes, and test promising therapeutics to mitigate this side-effect.

Articles

  • Accepted manuscripts
  • Issue in progress
  • Latest complete issue
  • Issue archive
  • Archive by article type
  • Subject collections
  • Interviews
  • Sign up for alerts

About us

  • About DMM
  • Editors and Board
  • Editor biographies
  • Travelling Fellowships
  • Grants and funding
  • Journal Meetings
  • Workshops
  • The Company of Biologists

For Authors

  • Submit a manuscript
  • Aims and scope
  • Presubmission enquiries
  • Article types
  • Manuscript preparation
  • Cover suggestions
  • Editorial process
  • Promoting your paper
  • Open Access
  • Biology Open transfer

Journal Info

  • Journal policies
  • Rights and permissions
  • Media policies
  • Reviewer guide
  • Sign up for alerts

Contact

  • Contact DMM
  • Advertising
  • Feedback

Twitter   YouTube   LinkedIn

© 2021   The Company of Biologists Ltd   Registered Charity 277992