Little things, like taking a shortcut through the park on your way to work each day can make a big difference

to your mental health. Find your little big thing

little big thing at every mind matters. This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. Do you have skinny genes? I'm not talking about the pant you were in college but can't fit into anymore.

No skinny G-E-N-E-S genes are factors found in folks who are naturally felt and

researchers have just identified one that appears to tell the body's

adipose tissue to burn more fat. We all know these people who can eat whatever they

want but never gain any weight. Joseph Penninger is a geneticist at the University of British Columbia.

He says that individuals who are effortlessly trim may hold the key to understanding obesity.

See, scientists interested in learning how we control our weight have

traditionally focused on the things that make you fat, like diet or metabolism.

But not really studied why people actually stay skinny. So we thought we just turn around the fields and

study genetics of sinness. Penninger and his colleagues started out by searching a database, maintained by a genome center in Estonia, for its most slender registrants.

And they weeded out people who were listed as having anorexia, or other conditions that alter body fat. Then they looked for genetic

markers that tran with these skinny peats. One gene in particular caught their eye.

ALK or the gene for anoplastic lymphoma kinase, is a stretch of DNA whose mutant form

has been associated with human cancers.

But its normal function had never been established.

So the scientist made mutant fruit flies and mutant mice.

To really show that the gene associated with sinus in human makes also flies and mice skinny.

And that's exactly what we found.

But the mutant gene doesn't cause the animals to eat less.

We found that ALK acts in our brains,

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