A research team has narrowed down and located the genes that play a role in diabetes. This detection is a huge advancement in the study of who potentially will develop Type 1 diabetes and how to prevent this disease. Type 1 diabetes is when the body's immune system kills off insulin producing cells in the pancreas. Roughly 3 million people in the United States have this disease.
The team gathered information about the genetic makeup of 27,000 people. This study included individuals with Type 1 diabetes and others who did not. They began looking for differences in DNA by starting with 200,00 possible locations in the genome. In order to do this the researchers used a technique called fine mapping which pinpoints DNA sequence variations. In some genomic regions, they narrowed down the number of disease-causing DNA variations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the thousands down to five or less. Now that the genes and SNPs have been targeted, diabetes research will advance dramatically.
These findings are highly significant to diabetes research. Researchers can now shift their time away from trying to determine which gene heightens the risk and can now focus on how to treat and prevent Type 1 diabetes.
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