During the last two decades, the prevalence of obesity has dramatically
increased in western and westernized societies. Its devastating health
consequences include hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, or diabetes
and make obesity the second leading cause of unnecessary deaths in the
USA. As a consequence, obesity has a strong negative impact on the
public health care systems. Recently emerging scienti?c insight has
helped understanding obesity as a complex chronic disease with multiple
causes. A multileveled gene-environment interaction appears to involve a
substantial number of susceptibility genes, as well as associations with
low physical activity levels and intake of high-calorie, low-cost,
foods. Unfor- nately, therapeutic options to prevent or cure this
disease are extremely limited, posing an extraordinary challenge for
today's biomedical research community. Obesity results from imbalanced
energy metabolism leading to lipid storage. Only detailed understanding
of the multiple molecular underpinnings of energy metabolism can provide
the basis for future therapeutic options. Numerous aspects of obesity
are currently studied, including the essential role of neural and
endocrine control circuits, adaptive responses of catabolic and anabolic
pathways, metabolic fuel sensors, regulation of appetite and satiation,
sensory information processing, transcriptional control of metabolic
processes, and the endocrine role of adipose tissue. These studies are
predominantly fuelled by basic research on mammalian models or clinical
studies, but these ?ndings were paralleled by important insights, which
have emerged from studying invertebrate models.
