[Molecular biology and clinical diabetology]

Recent advancement of molecular biology highlighted three areas of basic research which may be important for clinical diabetology. One is the understanding of mechanisms of differentiation in pancreatic beta-cells and adipocytes. The second is the development of methods of tissue-specific knock-out mouse. This approach revealed that muscle may not be important for insulin-dependent glucose disposal in vivo. The third is the advancement of genetics which enabled to clone a major susceptibililly gene for type 2 diabetes mellitus (NIDDM1). These progress may bring new therapies for clinical diabetology.