Midsummer Nights' Science: The Eliana Hechter Lecture: How do genes control our size and shape?

People come in many shapes and sizes, and genes play a strong role in determining how short or tall we are, or whether we are lean or obese. In this 2018 Midsummer Nights' Science talk, institute member, Metabolism Program co-director, and Boston Children's Hospital endocrinologist Joel Hirschhorn discusses recent dramatic advances in genetics that have led to the discovery of hundreds or thousands of places in our genomes that influence height or obesity, what this tells us about the biology of human height and weight, and how these discoveries could lead to new treatments for obesity.