When University of Michigan researchers began tinkering with a gene in obese mice, they were only looking for a way to eliminate the risk of diabetes in those mice.

What they ended up finding was a “fat” gene that kept the mice — who were eating high-fat diets — from gaining weight in the first place.

“We really expected to disrupt the link between obesity and diabetes,” said Alan Saltiel, senior author of the paper from the U-M Life Sciences Institute. “Instead, we just disrupted the link between diet and obesity.”

Their work was published today in the journal Cell.

Inflammation has long been understood to be increased in overweight people and to play a role in diabetes, Saltiel said. So researchers focused in on a particular gene that involves inflammation and disabled it in a group of mice.

The researchers said they had three groups of mice: One group that got a regular diet and two groups that were fed high-fat diets. Only one of the high-fat diet groups had the disabled gene, so researchers would be able to observe whether they developed the symptoms of diabetes, said Shian-Huey Chiang, also an author on the paper.

But about three months in, the scientists realized those mice weren't gaining the weight they were expected to gain.

Not only did the mice with the disabled gene stay thin, they didn’t have the inflammation, the insulin resistance or the accumulation of lipids in their livers that typically accompanies a high-fat diet and the beginnings of diabetes.

"That was a surprise to us," Chiang said. 

Turns out, those mice had higher body temperatures and were burning more energy than the mice who had the typical gene.

It’s still quite early in the process, but the work could have potential implications on human weight loss if further study shows a similar gene reaction in humans. It's much too early to say what will happen with this particular finding, but the work has the potential to lead to future weight loss drug creation if similar mechanisms are discovered in humans.

Researchers are urgently searching for mechanisms to slow and reduce the prevalence of diabetes and obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 34 percent of adults ages 20 and over in the United States are obese, and nearly 30 percent of MIchiganders were obese in 2008.

Obesity is listed as a major risk factor for conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain type of cancer.

“This is a step in understanding the regulation of energy expenditure and energy balance,” Saltiel said. “Diabetes and obesity is really a huge epidemic around the world and it is a huge battle. We are losing that battle."

Tina Reed is the Health & Environment reporter at Ann Arbor.com. She can be reached at tinareed@annarbor.com or follow her on Twitter @Treedinaa.