Importantly, murine ZEB1 shows strong conservation to its human ortholog and its gene was located within one of the top 16 regions of association in a recently performed meta-analysis of 32 body fat distribution genome-wide association studies (Heid et al., 2010), consistent with an earlier report indicating a putative link between genomic variation in the ZEB1 locus and obesity (Hager et al., 1998). Here, ZEB1 is linked to obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.