NEW YORK — Talk about a feverish attempt to lose weight: Scientists have discovered a gene that might someday help people shed pounds in exchange for a slightly higher body temperature.

The gene appears to make people burn off calories, and it might help explain why some people are prone to getting fat.

The hope is that researchers can find a drug to make it work harder, so the body will burn off more calories rather than storing them as fat.

That would raise body temperature. A person might be able to lose 5 pounds a year with every one-tenth of a degree increase in body temperature, estimated researcher Craig Warden of the University of California, Davis.

It will take further study to see how much of a temperature increase people could safely stand, he said. He and colleagues at Davis and elsewhere announce the discovery in the March issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

“I think this is probably a major discovery for obesity,” said an authority on fatness, Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania.

Scientists haven’t known how people’s bodies regulate their weight, steering them toward a given weight despite dieting or bingeing, Stunkard said. The newly discovered gene could play a big role, he said.

It might lead to a weight-loss drug, he said, adding, “I’ll bet you the drug companies are hovering like vultures over this finding.”

Cells of the body burn calories to get energy to do their jobs — making our hearts beat, our legs move, our thoughts form — and to generate heat for body temperature.

Warden believes the newfound gene is an energy thief. It gives rise to a protein that steals some of the energy cells generate. That means cells have to burn extra calories to make up for the loss.

If scientists can prod the gene into making more of this energy-stealing protein, cells would have to burn still more calories.

Researchers already knew of another gene that promotes energy theft, and drug companies are studying drugs to make it more active. But that gene, called UCP1, is active only in brown fat, which is sparse in adults.

In contrast, newfound gene UCP2 is at work in every human tissue Warden has checked, especially ordinary white fat and muscle, he said. And its protein appears to be about 20 times more abundant in the body than the protein from UCP1.

So the newfound protein is probably a better bet for weight loss, he said.

Some people may be prone to getting fat because their UCP2 isn’t active enough, Warden said. Indeed, his group found that the gene was less active in a strain of obesity-prone mice than in a strain that resists putting on weight.

In the obesity-resisting mice, a high-fat diet cranked up the gene’s activity.

Researchers also found that in mice chromosomes, UCP2 is located in a place previously thought to hold an unidentified obesity gene. There’s a hint of the same thing in people, Warden said.

Warden’s work is “exceptionally interesting and provocative,” said Dr. Jeffrey Flier, who studies obesity at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Flier agreed the discovery might lead to a weight-loss drug. But first scientists have to figure out what turns the new gene on and off, he said.

Flier also said that if somebody takes a drug that kicks the gene into overdrive to burn more calories, nobody knows whether the body would compensate by eating more.