
134 ◾ Accele rating D iscover y
network-based reasoning approach should generalize readily to other
domains and applications.
EXAMPLE: NEW DRUGS FOR OBESITY
Genetic population studies have found that some variants of the FTO
gene appear to be correlated with obesity in humans [1]. We would
like to determine a mechanism and also discover a potential treatment
that might affect FTO. Using network analysis we begin by looking for
things that might influence FTO in cells. What we find is shown in
Figure11.9.
Leptin seems to be a hormone that aects FTO. e evidence for the
linkage is shown in Figure11.10.
Now we expand the network to look fo