Prof Sadaf Farooqi shared her life scientific with Radio 4’s Prof Jim Al-Khalili, talking about her career in science and the discovery of rare genetic defects that can lead to obesity.

In 1997, Sadaf noticed that two children she was studying lacked the hormone leptin. From there, she went on to discover the first single gene defect that causes obesity. For children with this rare inherited condition, a voracious appetite is a biological response to starvation signals in the brain. Sadaf talks about discovering ten rare genetic disorders that cause severe childhood obesity and about what this means for the rest of us.

The Life Scientific aired on 24 January 2017. Listen on the BBC Radio 4 website.