Characterization of a Type 2 diabetes-associated islet-specific enhancer cluster in STARD10 by genome editing of EndoC-βH1 cells

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 100 genetic loci associated with type 2 diabetes. The majority of these are located in the intergenic or intragenic regions suggesting that the implicated variants may alter chromatin conformation. This, in turn, is likely to influence the expression of nearby or more remotely located genes to alter beta cell function. At present, however, detailed molecular and functional analyses are still lacking for most of these variants. We recently analysed one of these loci and mapped five causal variants in an islet-specific enhancer cluster within the STARD10 gene locus. Here, we aimed to understand how these causal variants influence b-cell function by alteration of the chromatin structure of enhancer cluster