Researchers have found many common gene sequence variants linked to obesity, but, so far, these only account for about 5% of its total heritability.
There are many possible explanations for obesity’s “missing” heritability. But we have shown that, in families with type 2 diabetes (and probably more generally), this absence is mostly due to a large number of rare (<0.5% of the population) genetic variants that can’t be detected in conventional genetic sequencing studies.
It’s difficult to know how many different genes could be involved in obesity susceptibility, but it can’t be less than 50 and may be hundreds.
Read the full, original story here: Genetic research shows single approach to obesity won’t work