The objective of the Genetics Core is to promote and facilitate genetic studies of diabetes and its complications in humans and animal models at the Joslin Diabetes Center and other collaborating institutions. To this end, the Core provides resources in the form of repositories of DNA and support services for genetic studies, such as genotyping and assistance with data analysis. Such functions of the Genetics Core will be expanded during the next funding period to meet the increasing interest in genetic studies spurred by the availability of the human genome sequence, the improved knowledge of genetic variation, and the development of cost-effective genotyping methods allowing genetic studies of unprecedented scale. The following are the objectives for the next funding period: 1. Expand the collection of well-characterized DNA samples by leveraging ongoing clinical research projects so that the potential of Joslin Diabetes Center's patient base is fully exploited. 2. Expand the support services for genetic studies by upgrading the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping service from low to medium throughput and provide basic genetic profiles of the DNA samples in the Core's collections. 3. Build a strong database to link genetic data across all studies in order to synergistically enhance the value of any one study and enable cross-experiment analyses.