Scientists have identified six new genes which play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes, and among the group is the second gene known to also play a role in prostate cancer.
The new findings bring the total number of genes or genomic regions implicated in diabetes to 16, said Laura Scott, assistant research scientist in the University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics. Researchers from U-M were one of three teams of scientists in Europe and North America that led the multi-group collaboration.
The findings, which are published in the journal Nature Genetics, provide new insights into the mechanisms which are usually responsible for the control of glucose, or sugar, levels in the blood, and to the derangements that can result in type 2 diabetes, which impacts more than 170 million people worldwide.
One of the newly discovered genes, known as JAZF1, contains a separate variant that has recently been shown to play a role in prostate cancer, and is the second gene that appears to play a role in both conditions. The first identified overlap between ge…
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