KCNQ1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus: Current knowledge of the KCNQ1 protein in INS-1-cells and the association of the KCNQ1 polymorphisms with type 2 diabetes in two large Japanese studies [15], [16] led us to investigate a role for these variants in type 2 diabetes-related quantitative traits (especially serum insulin release) in the population-based Inter99 study sample.