Millennium other research news

MLNM and collaborators published the mapping of a gene for adult-onset diabetes, using families in a region of Finland as the gene pool. The families' diabetes probably is due to low insulin secretion rather than insulin resistance (the latter having been identified at a locus on chromosome 2 in Mexican American diabetics). The new gene, named NIDDM2, was mapped to a section of chromosome 12, previously linked with a rare form of diabetes that occurs at an earlier age.

As described in Nature Genetics, the gene was mapped by sampling 26 families comprised of 217 individuals, of whom 120 were diabetic. An initial scan was unsuccessful, so the search was narrowed by including only people in the lowest quartile of insulin levels on an oral glucose tolerance test. This strategy yielded evidence of linkage to chromosome 12q, precisely the location of the MODY3 gene of earlier-onset (by age 30), non-insulin dependent diabetes. The mean onset in the Finnish families was age 58. ...