Fig. 3. Timeline of key discoveries in obesity genetics.

Genes identified for monogenic obesity in a given year are shown on the left. Discoveries made for polygenic obesity are shown on the right, including a cumulative count of newly discovered loci per year and by ancestry. Although candidate gene and genome-wide linkage studies became available in the late 1990s, findings were limited, and these study designs are not as frequently used as genome-wide association studies.