The present review provides a summary of signal pathways related to DM (Figure 1), including AMPK signal pathway (Kurimoto et al., 2013), PI3K/Akt signal pathway (Li et al., 2015), mTOR signal pathway (Siegel, 2008), JAK-STAT signal pathway (Gurzov et al., 2016), ROS-ERK-NF-κB signal pathway (Liu et al., 2013), Wnt signal pathway (Chiang et al., 2012), and IGF-1 signal pathway (Siddle, 2011). The gene discussed is SOAT1; the disease is diabetes mellitus.