Student or educator? Sign up with your school email and get 6 months of Pro free.
Cited by 1,527

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 7 of the 7 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Obesity-Associated FTO Gene Encodes a 2-Oxoglutarate-Dependent Nucleic Acid Demethylase

Open access
Gerken, Thomas, Girard, Christophe A., Tung, Yi-Chun Loraine, Webby, Celia J., Saudek, Vladimir, Hewitson, Kirsty S., Yeo, Giles S. H., McDonough, Michael A., Cunliffe, Sharon, McNeill, Luke A., Galvanovskis, Juris, Rorsman, Patrik, Robins, Peter, Prieur, Xavier, Coll, Anthony P., Ma, Marcella, Jovanovic, Zorica, Farooqi, I. Sadaf, Sedgwick, Barbara, Barroso, Inês, Lindahl, Tomas, Ponting, Chris P., Ashcroft, Frances M., O'Rahilly, Stephen, Schofield, Christopher J.·2007·Science

Abstract

Variants in the FTO (fat mass and obesity associated) gene are associated with increased body mass index in humans. Here, we show by bioinformatics analysis that FTO shares sequence motifs with Fe(II)- and 2-oxoglutarate–dependent oxygenases. We find that recombinant murine Fto catalyzes the Fe(II)- and 2OG-dependent demethylation of 3-methylthymine in single-stranded DNA, with concomitant production of succinate, formaldehyde, and carbon dioxide. Consistent with a potential role in nucleic acid demethylation, Fto localizes to the nucleus in transfected cells. Studies of wild-type mice indicate that Fto messenger RNA (mRNA) is most abundant in the brain, particularly in hypothalamic nuclei governing energy balance, and that Fto mRNA levels in the arcuate nucleus are regulated by feeding and fasting. Studies can now be directed toward determining the physiologically relevant FTO substrate and how nucleic acid methylation status is linked to increased fat mass.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1126/science.1151710

Cites

7 of 7 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 7 references

Cited by

See all 1,527

Metadata

Authors
Gerken, T., Girard, C. A., Tung, Y.-C. L., Webby, C. J., Saudek, V., Hewitson, K. S., Yeo, G. S. H., McDonough, M. A., Cunliffe, S., McNeill, L. A., Galvanovskis, J., Rorsman, P., Robins, P., Prieur, X., Coll, A. P., Ma, M., Jovanovic, Z., Farooqi, I. S., Sedgwick, B., Barroso, I., Lindahl, T., Ponting, C. P., Ashcroft, F. M., O'Rahilly, S., & Schofield, C. J.
Venue
Science
Published
2007-11-30
Volume
318
Issue
5855
Pages
1469-1472
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W2169494000
Cited by
1,527
References
7
FWCI
32.09
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Obesity-Associated FTO Gene Encodes a 2-Oxoglutarate-Dependent Nucleic Acid Demethylase. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1151710
The paper
Gerken, T., Girard, C. A., Tung, Y.-C. L., Webby, C. J., Saudek, V., Hewitson, K. S., Yeo, G. S. H., McDonough, M. A., Cunliffe, S., McNeill, L. A., Galvanovskis, J., Rorsman, P., Robins, P., Prieur, X., Coll, A. P., Ma, M., Jovanovic, Z., Farooqi, I. S., Sedgwick, B., . . . Schofield, C. J. (2007). The Obesity-Associated FTO Gene Encodes a 2-Oxoglutarate-Dependent Nucleic Acid Demethylase. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1151710

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.