Dr Miriam Stoppard on the exciting news that Edinburgh scientists have identified nine genes that play a key role in increasing the risk of developing type 1 diabetes, which could lead to the development of new therapies to prevent and treat the disease
Genes are at the root of everything and I believe we’ll eventually find that most diseases are traced back to our genetic blueprint.
And not just single genes but groups of genes â families of them that work in unison. This is good news because if families of genes can be switched on and cause a disease, presumably we can find drugs to switch them off and prevent or cure that disease.
Edinburgh scientists have identified nine genes that play a key role in increasing the risk of developing type 1 diabetes â only four of which had been known before. Could this discovery lead to the development of new therapies to prevent and treat type 1 diabetes, which affects an estimated 400,000 people in the UK?
Genes can act in two different ways. Core genes have a direct impact on the development of disease while regulator genes have an indirect impact through their interactions with core genes. This is the first time core genes have been identified for type 1 diabetes. To pinpoint them, the Edinburgh ÂUniversity researchers used a new approach to explore the effect of variants â changes to the DNA sequence â on genes throughout our genome which cause disease.