At WFS1, SLC30A8 and KCNJ11, the associated exome chip variants were all common and in LD with the index variant from previous T2D GWAS in our population (rEU2: 0.6–1.0; 1000 Genomes), indicating these coding variants might be the functional variants that were tagged by GWAS SNVs. This evidence concerns the gene KCNJ11 and type 2 diabetes mellitus.