With people's changing life style and dietary habits, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has become much more serious than ever before. T2DM is a polygenic metabolic disorder, resulting from the interaction of genetic and various environmental factors. Among all the T2DM related genes, the transcription factor 7 like 2 (TCF7L2) gene is one of the most relevant risk-related genes for T2DM. However, the role of TCF7L2 in T2DM pathogenesis has not yet been interpreted thoroughly. Based on the experimental studies in recent years, this review discusses several possible mechanisms of T2DM pathogenesis induced by TCF7L2.

Here we studied the genetic polymorphism and evolutionary differentiation of the Guangdong Liannan Yao population based on 15 autosomal STR loci and 19 Y chromosomal STR loci. The blood card DNA of 302 unrelated individuals from the Yao Autonomous County of Liannan was directly amplified using an Expressmarker 16 + 19Y kit and genotyped using a 3500XL Genetic Analyzer. For the autosomal STR loci, the CPD value was over 0.999 999 999 999, while the CPE value was over 0.9999. The population comparison revealed a closer relationship between the Liannan Yao population and the She ethnic population than other reported Chinese populations. For the Y-STRs, a total of 102 unique haplotypes were obtained, 87 of which were observed only once. Both RST pairwise analysis and a multidimensional scaling plot showed that the Liannan Yao population is closely related to the Fujian She ethnic population and is significantly different from other Chinese ethnic populations. The results show that the 15 autosomal STR and 19 Y-STR loci are valuable for forensic applications and human genetic studies in the Liannan Yao population.