Hi Reddit! We are leaders of a global research effort to identify and characterize the mechanisms responsible for the development of type 2 diabetes (and related conditions including obesity) using human genetics. The prevalence of these conditions continues to increase, and current strategies for prevention and treatment are clearly inadequate. We perform large-scale discovery studies (using genotyping and next-generation sequencing in tens of thousands of individuals) to highlight the variants that influence individual predisposition to these conditions. We then use these discoveries as the starting point to home in on the specific mechanisms through which those genes act, providing novel clues to disease biology. We hope to turn this information into new ways of treating and preventing these conditions. Our latest study (including GWAS, exome array, exome and genome sequencing in 120,000 subjects) was just published in Nature (you can read here). This study provides the most detailed description to date of the contribution of inherited genetic variation to T2D risk: it has established that shared common variation underlies most of that predisposition, as well as identifying a number of genes which are disrupted as a result of those changes, and which are therefore prime targets for future therapeutic development. You can find out a bit more about these studies in the blogs here. An important facet of our efforts is being proactive about sharing those data with other researchers (for example). We are: Mark McCarthy, University of Oxford, UK Mike Boehnke, University of Michigan, US Andrew Morris, University of Liverpool, UK Jason Flannick, Broad Institute, US Christian Fuchsberger, University of Michigan, US & EURAC, Italy Tanya Teslovich, University of Michigan. We will be back at 3pm EDT (noon PT, 8pm BST) to answer your question, ask me/us anything! Thanks everyone - we’re signing off now. Been fun. Sorry we didnt get to every question but hope you have found it useful. Best Mark (on behalf of the team)