From a panel of known islet-specific transcripts, the authors identified GLIS3 as a downstream target of HI-LNC25, a lncRNA that shares a regulatory domain with MAFB. Variants at the GLIS3 locus are associated with different risks for T1D (Barrett et al., 2009), elevated fasting glucose levels (Dupuis et al., 2010), as well as T2D (Cho et al., 2012). Here, GLIS3 is linked to type 2 diabetes mellitus.