Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is one of the threatening disorders in the world. It affects people of all ages. Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a condition in which the glucose level in the blood is elevated due to improper function of the secretion of insulin from beta cells of the pancreas. It is a multifactorial disease because it is caused by both environmental and hereditary factors. One of the genes which play an important role in type 2 diabetes mellitus is SLC30A8 which encodes for zinc transporter ZnT8. The common polymorphic site for SLC30A8 is rs13266634. This single-nucleotide polymorphism leads to type 2 diabetes mellitus by replacing the arginine residue with tryptophan residue. This review mainly focuses on the polymorphic studies in the gene SLC30A8 and its association with type 2 diabetes mellitus.
