Across the African continent, the focus on disease has long been on infectious killers such as HIV and tuberculosis. Of particular concern: spiraling rates of type 2 diabetes. Research in sub-Saharan African populations has already challenged some basic understandings regarding the biology of type 2 diabetes. The gene may therefore represent a potential new drug target, says Tinashe Chikowore, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who is also leading studies of type 2 diabetes patients in the region. “We now need to find out just how many diabetics carry this African-specific mutation, both in sub-Saharan African populations and those of African ancestry around the world,” he says.