TCF7L2 and diabetes: a tale of two tissues, and of two species.
McCarthy MI., Rorsman P., Gloyn AL.
Human genetics is revealing ever more variants that influence propensity to common diseases, but progress in translating these discoveries into the biological mechanisms responsible for predisposition continues to lag behind. A recent paper in Cell (Boj et al., 2012) using rodent models to examine how diabetes-associated variants near TCF7L2 perturb metabolic regulation provides surprising results.