The search for type 2 diabetes genes has been longer and harder than we had imagined, and is still incomplete. In the present issue (Diabetologia 52: 1061-1074), Lillioja and Wilton take stock of current gene searches in type 2 diabetes. It has become clear that powerful genome-wide association studies have not supplanted earlier family based linkage studies, which may still point the way to undiscovered diabetes genes. Although we have been forced to change our previous assumptions about the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, the task of finding further key genes is still achievable. On this month's cover a distant light signals the hope that this genome journey will have a bright and happy ending, an outcome that we can begin to glimpse, even though we have not yet arrived.
Download the high resolution cover image
Cover credit: PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY