Large-Scale Genetic Study of Diabetes

A genetic study of more than 2,000 people is being conducted by scientists at Cambridge University (UK) in an effort to better understand type 1 diabetes and discover disease-associated genes and polymorphisms.

Leading the research is Professor John Todd, of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at Cambridge. His group will use a standard panel of 10,000 nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to compare genotypes between 1,000 control samples and 1,000 diabetic samples. This is the first stage in an analysis of more than 20,000 DNA samples already collected from diabetes patients and their relatives.

Scientists will use the MegAllele genotyping reagents and software of ParAllele BioScience (South San Francisco, CA, USA) and the GeneChip Tag Arrays and instrumentation systems of Affymetrix (also in South San Francisco). A recent partnership between Affymetrix and ParAllele enables researchers to perform large-scale genotyping in their own labs with their own panels of SNPs. Users can select SNPs from custom panels of 3,000-5,000 SNPs and standard panels of up to 10,000 pre-selected SNPs. Assay design is customized and comprehensive, enabling users to successfully genotype more of the SNPs they want.

"This research project is the most exciting and important genetics experiment I've ever been involved in,” said Prof. Todd. "We've been collecting samples for quite some time now and have been waiting for a technology that would give us the genetic power we needed to commence informative studies. Using this new solution from Affymetrix and ParAllele for a genome-wide gene association study provides us with the best opportunity we've ever had to discover new disease-associated genes and polymorphisms.”




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