The Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium (T1DGC) will attempt to identify genes that influence an individual’s risk for developing type 1 diabetes. Principal Investigator Stephen Rich, from the University of Virginia and Chair of the T1DGC Steering Committee has chosen to use Illumina’s recently launched HumanHap550-Duo BeadChip for the study.
Dr Stephen Rich, director, Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia, said: “Illumina’s technology meets the University of Virginia’s needs in terms of data quality, call rates, and genomic coverage, and we think that provides us with the most potential for discovering variants linked to complex disease, like type 1 diabetes. The ultimate goal of this project is gene identification. Once these genes have been identified, researchers can then use this information to develop better approaches to detecting, treating, and preventing the disease.”
Beena Akolkar, program director, immunopathogenesis and genetics of type 1 diabetes at the NIDDK, said: “The tools and technologies now available to conduct genome-wide association studies are very powerful and have revolutionized the genetics field, leading to an explosion of gene identification in various complex diseases.”