Obesity is a chronic, multifactorial disease with increasing worldwide prevalence. It characterized by excessive adipose tissue accumulation in the body, which decreases patient’s life expectancy and has been associated higher incidence of chronic degenerative diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, systemic arterial hypertension, cancer, cardiovascular disease. Several investigations hav...

To identify the molecular mechanisms involved in phagocytosis, we generated random insertion mutants of Dictyostelium discoideum and selected two mutants defective for phagocytosis. Both represented insertions in the same gene, named PHG1. This gene encodes a polytopic membrane protein with an N-terminal lumenal domain and nine potential transmembrane segments. Homologous genes can be identifie...