Whitehead Scans Liver and Pancreas Genomes for Diabetes Clues

NEW YORK, Feb. 27 (GenomeWeb News) - Scientists from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have published a study in today's issue of Science, in which they describe a method for scanning the genomes of human liver and pancreas in order to map the location of gene regulators that are known to be involved in type 2 diabetes.

The genome scanning technology is a modified version of a technology used to identify the role of transcription factors in the yeast genome, first reported in Science in October 2002. This is the first time the technology has been applied to human organs, according to Whitehead.

The team of scientists, led by Richard Young - who developed the original technology - found that one transcription factor, HNF4, controls about half of the genes involved in developing the pancreas and liver. The gene is thought to be involved in type 2 diabetes.