MAKING THE PAPER

摘要

Two independent projects in different countries and with very different subjects came to the same conclusion at around the same time. Both pinpoint a gene as having a crucial role in the formation of the insulin-producing β-cells of the pancreas - the cells that are defective in some forms of diabetes.rnAlthough there are various causes, diabetes ultimately results from insulin dysregulation. In one of the two most common forms of the disease, type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the pancreatic β-cells, progressively destroying them. Patients are treated with insulin injections, but scientists hope one day to be able to produce β-cells in the lab and then introduce these into patients to replace faulty or damaged cells.rnConstantin Polychronakos, a geneticist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has a long-standing interest in the genes that predispose people to type 1 diabetes. But in 2004, during clinical rounds as a paediatric endocrinologist, he was intrigued by a rare form of neonatal diabetes in two siblings. As he described in a publication that year, each child's pancreas completely lacked insulin-producing β-cells, as though the body had not had the proper instructions for making them.