Worms offer the skinny on fat genes

Microscopic worms that feasted on genetically engineered bacteria might shed light on why people gain weight. Biologists used this bacterial diet plan to turn off individual genes in the worms in order to identify ones that influence the animal’s fat.

Investigators recently engineered around 17,000 strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli so that each strain makes an extra RNA strand that corresponds to a specific worm gene.