Helping switch on an energy-burning type of fat called brown fat may offer a way to prevent obesity, researchers reported on Tuesday.

They found a gene called PRDM16 in brown fat but not in white fat -- the type of fat found all over the bodies of most adult humans, according to a Reuters story.

It may be possible to use this gene, or the protein whose production it controls, to help stop people from making too much white fat, the team at Harvard Medical School and the French research institute INSERM in Toulouse said.

-- Amanda Barrett, amNY.com