Because these animals spontaneously develop autoimmune diabetes mellitus that is similar to human T1D, including the presence of pancreas-specific autoantibodies and autoreactive CD4+ or CD8+ T-cells and synteny to human chromosomal linkage groups associated with T1D, they are a classical model system for investigating autoimmune T1D and/or failure in the tolerance mechanisms [4, 6, 28]. This evidence concerns the gene CD8A and type 1 diabetes mellitus.